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Cancer

New guardians of the genome

Nature volume 404, pages 823–824 (2000)Cite this article

DNA is vulnerable to many types of damage resulting from environmental insults or intrinsic cellular processes. So it is not surprising that cells possess a variety of DNA-repair systems. Several of these systems — referred to as ‘caretakers’ — are essential for maintaining genomic stability, offering protection from cancer-causing (oncogenic) mutations or chromosome rearrangements1.

Numbered among known caretaker proteins are those involved in repairing a variety of different types of DNA breaks, but conspicuous for their absence were the non-homologous-end-joining (NHEJ) proteins. These proteins are important for resolving both random DNA breaks produced by environmental agents (such as ionizing radiation) and specific breaks introduced during lymphocyte differentiation by programmed rearrangements of the genes encoding antigen receptors. Thanks to recent work, however — including that of Difilippantonio and colleagues2 (published a few weeks ago in Nature) and Gao and others3 (writing on page 897of this issue) — we can add NHEJ proteins to the list of genome guardians.

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Figure 1: Custodians of the genome.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Immunology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, 77030, Texas, USA

    David B. Roth

  2. the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, 20892, Maryland, USA

    Martin Gellert

Authors
  1. David B. Roth
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  2. Martin Gellert
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Correspondence to David B. Roth or Martin Gellert.

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Roth, D., Gellert, M. New guardians of the genome. Nature 404, 823–824 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35009180

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