Genome complexity: how to repair DNA (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, September 01, 2015, 15:14 (3372 days ago) @ dhw

A protein is identified that move broken strands to a repair site:-http://www.biotechniques.com/news/biotechniquesNews/biotechniques-360132.html-"In the new study, Mekhail's group induced double-strand breaks either near the telomeric regions, which affect the lifespan of cells and are implicated in cancer, or more internally. Cells carrying the kinesin-14 complex survived by activating the repair pathway while many mutant cells missing the complex died. -"Durocher's team tracked the damaged DNA in living cells using time-lapse microscopy and showed broken DNA moving toward the nuclear envelope. Kinesin-14 was necessary for this process. -"The scientists also introduced a DNA “zip code” sequence adjacent to the double-strand break sites that targeted those spots to Nup84 (i..e., the hospital). This led to a drastic boost in repair, but interestingly, the zip code did not rescue repair entirely. -"It's still unclear exactly how kinesin-14 cooperates with microtubules to shuttle broken DNA to Nup84, but another recent study in yeast showed that certain molecular complexes including another nuclear envelope protein link DSBs to microtubules and are important for repair." -Comment: The complexity of the cell protein mechanisms highly suggests design.