Repair of Oxidative DNA Damage in Mammalian Cells

Abstract

DNA that carries vital genetic information constantly suffers from oxidative damage. Oxidative DNA damage is generally repaired by the base excision repair (BER) pathway initiated by damage-specific DNA glycosylases. Although the basic mechanism of BER is conserved from bacteria to mammals, recent studies indicate that mammalian cells use an elaborate and efficient repair network to cope with oxidative DNA damage. It remains elusive how BER enzymes gain access to and repair DNA lesions in the condensed nucleosome organization of the eukaryotic genome.