In living systems, the repair of genotoxic damage requires that the lesion first be detected in an excess of undamaged DNA. A base-excision DNA repair enzyme, MutM, is now captured and structurally elucidated at the stage of initial encounter with a damaged nucleobase within a DNA duplex. By combining structural biology and computational modelling, the pathway by which this encounter causes the damaged nucleobase to be extruded from the DNA duplex is defined.
- Yan Qi
- Marie C. Spong
- Gregory L. Verdine
