BiotechMashup

Lymphoma and other cancers may occur when a delicate gene recombination process in antibody-making cells goes awry, according to preliminary studies in mice at the University of Michigan.

(University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center) A team of investigators led by a physician-scientist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has shown for the first time that the small protein SUMO can team up with the replication protein A complex to facilitate DNA repair. The study is published in the Aug. 13 edition of the journal Molecular Cell.

(Michigan State University) A team of Michigan State University scientists -- using a new cooling method they created -- have uncovered the inner workings of a key iron-containing enzyme, a discovery that could help researchers develop new medicines or understand how enzymes repair DNA. Taurine/alpha-ketoglutarate dioxygenase, known as TauD, is a bacterial enzyme that is important in metabolism. Enzymes in this family repair DNA, sense oxygen and help produce antibiotics.

In order to preserve our DNA, cells have developed an intricate system for monitoring and repairing DNA damage. Yet precisely how the initial damage signal is converted into a repair response remains unclear. Researchers have now solved a crucial piece of the complex puzzle.

Researchers report that DNA polymerase theta, or PolQ, promotes an inaccurate repair process, which can ultimately cause mutations, cell death or cancer.

Researchers have shown for the first time that the small protein SUMO can team up with the replication protein A complex to facilitate DNA repair.

(Salk Institute) In order to preserve our DNA, cells have developed an intricate system for monitoring and repairing DNA damage. Yet precisely how the initial damage signal is converted into a repair response remains unclear. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have now solved a crucial piece of the complex puzzle.

(University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences) Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) and the School of Medicine have discovered that inhibiting a key molecule in a DNA repair pathway could provide the means to make cancer cells more sensitive to radiation therapy while protecting healthy cells. The findings are reported in Science Signaling and provide new insights into mechanisms of how the body fixes environmentally induced DNA damage and into the deadly neurological disease ataxia-telangiectasia.

Over the last years, researchers have steadily built a model of how a powerful DNA repair complex works. Now, a new discovery provides revolutionary insights into the way the molecular motor inside the complex functions -- findings they say may have implications for treatment of disorders ranging from cancer to cystic fibrosis.