BRCA2 and RAD51 are two proteins that play a central role in homologous recombination (HR) and DNA double strand break (DSB) repair. BRCA2 assists RAD51 fibrillation and defibrillation through binding with its eight BRC repeats, with BRC4 being one of the ...
Difficulties to replicate telomeres - the ends of our chromosomes - can cause telomere shortening and
genome instability. These difficulties are due to the repetitive DNA sequence and distinct structures at telomeres
that challenge the semi-conservative DN ...
Why biological quality-control systems fail is often mysterious. Specifically, checkpoints such as the DNA damage checkpoint or the spindle assembly checkpoint are overriden after prolonged arrests allowing cells to continue dividing despite the continued ...
The evolutionarily conserved POT1 protein binds single-stranded G-rich telomeric DNA and has been implicated in contributing to telomeric DNA maintenance and the suppression of DNA damage checkpoint signaling. Here, we explore human POT1 function through g ...
Oxidative DNA lesions, constantly generated by both endogenous and environmentally induced reactive oxygen species, are removed via the base excision repair pathway. In bacteria, Fpg and Nei DNA glycosylases, belonging to the helix-two-turn-helix (H2TH) st ...
The use of omics is gaining importance in the field of nanoecotoxicology; an increasing number of studies are aiming to investigate the effects and modes of action of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) in this way. However, a systematic synthesis of the outco ...
Telomeres are specialized nucleoprotein structures present at the ends of linear chromosome. The telomeric DNA part is comprised of 5-15 kilo base pairs of double stranded TTAGGG repeats and it contains at the 3' end a single-stranded G-rich overhang of 50 ...
Designing compounds that bind to the acidic patch of the nucleosome core particle (NCP) is an emerging therapeutic approach that can inhibit the binding of key chromatin factors. Pretreatment of human ovarian carcinoma, A2780, cells with RAPTA-T, an antime ...
A variety of DNA-binding proteins organizes the chromosomal DNA and regulates gene transcription, and DNA replication and recombination. In particular, for gene regulation there is a category of DNA-binding proteins, the transcription factors, which can de ...
The discovery of cancer-associated alterations has primarily focused on genetic variants. Nonetheless, altered epigenomes contribute to deregulate transcription and promote oncogenic pathways. Here, we designed an algorithmic approach (RESET) to identify a ...
Long interspersed element-1 (LINE-1, L1) is a mobile genetic element comprising about 17% of the human genome. L1 utilizes an endonuclease to insert L1 cDNA into the target genomic DNA, which induces double-strand DNA breaks in the human genome and activat ...
KAP1 is an enigmatic regulatory protein, first described some twenty years ago, shown to be involved in multiple and diverse cellular functions. Specifically, it mediates tasks critical to cell growth and differentiation, pluripotency, apoptosis, gene sile ...
Trans-lesion synthesis polymerases, like DNA Polymerase-eta (Pol-eta), are essential for cell survival. Pol-eta bypasses ultraviolet-induced DNA damages via a two-metal-ion mechanism that assures DNA strand elongation, with formation of the leaving group p ...
The specific labeling of proteins with synthetic probes is a powerful approach to study protein function and protein tags have been widely used for this purpose. A well-established example for a self-labeling protein tag is SNAP-tag. It specifically reacts ...
Phosphorylation of H2AX (gamma H2AX) is an early sign of DNA damage induced by replication stalling. However, the role of H2AX in the repair of this type of DNA damage is still unclear. In this study, we used an inactivated adeno-associated virus (AAV) to ...
The repair of wounds is one of the most complex biological processes that occur during human life. After an injury, multiple biological pathways immediately become activated and are synchronized to respond. In human adults, the wound repair process commonl ...
Recently, a new method for the specific covalent labeling of fusion proteins in vitro and in living cells has been developed. This method is based on the unusual mechanism of a DNA repair protein: the O6-alkylguanine DNA alkyltransferase (AGT). In addition ...
