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DNA repair

Familiar ends with alternative endings

Nature volume 518, pages 174–175 (2015)Cite this article

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The faithful propagation of species requires a complex balance of DNA-repair pathways to maintain genome integrity. New work sheds light on one such poorly understood pathway and its role in certain cancers. See Letters p.254 & p.258

The repair of double-strand breaks in DNA is crucial for life, and can proceed by several mechanisms. How are these repair pathways coordinated, and what happens when certain pathways are disabled? This question is especially pertinent because DNA-repair systems are deficient in many types of cancer; inhibition of complementary repair pathways1,2 might therefore be used to kill such cancer cells. Two papers3,4 in this issue, and an accompanying report5 published online in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, reveal how a poorly understood alternative repair pathway compensates when the predominant mechanisms are impaired. The findings help to explain the causes of genomic rearrangements that are seen in cancer cells, and suggest therapeutic opportunities for cancers that harbour DNA-repair deficiencies.

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Figure 1: Repair mechanisms for double-strand breaks in DNA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nam Woo Cho and Roger A. Greenberg are in the Departments of Cancer Biology and Pathology, Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute, Basser Research Center for BRCA, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6160, USA.,

    Nam Woo Cho & Roger A. Greenberg

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  1. Nam Woo Cho
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  2. Roger A. Greenberg
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Correspondence to Roger A. Greenberg.

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Cho, N., Greenberg, R. Familiar ends with alternative endings. Nature 518, 174–175 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14200

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