Life Sciences Commons^™

Investigation Of Novel Functions For Dna Damage Response And Repair Proteins In Escherichia Coli And Humans, Benjamin A. Hilton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Endogenous and exogenous agents that can damage DNA are a constant threat to genome stability in all living cells. In response, cells have evolved an array of mechanisms to repair DNA damage or to eliminate the cells damaged beyond repair. One of these mechanisms is nucleotide excision repair (NER) which is the major repair pathway responsible for removing a wide variety of bulky DNA lesions. Deficiency, or mutation, in one or several of the NER repair proteins is responsible for many diseases, including cancer. Prokaryotic NER involves only three proteins to recognize and incise a damaged site, while eukaryotic NER …