Mammalian Base Excision Repair: the Forgotten Archangel

Base excision repair (BER) is a frontline repair system that is responsible for maintaining genome integrity and thus preventing premature aging, cancer and many other human diseases by repairing thousands of DNA lesions and strand breaks continuously caused by endogenous and exogenous mutagens. This fundamental and essential function of BER not only necessitates tight control of the continuous availability of basic components for fast and accurate repair, but also requires temporal and spatial coordination of BER and cell cycle progression to prevent replication of damaged DNA. The major goal of this review is to critically examine controversial and newly emerging questions about mammalian BER pathways, mechanisms regulating BER capacity, BER responses to DNA damage and their links to checkpoint control of DNA replication.

• Publication year

  2013

• Venue

  Nucleic Acids Research

• Publication date

  2013-02-12

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1093/nar/gkt076PMID 23408852PMCID 3616742
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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