DNA mismatch repair articles from across Nature Portfolio

An interdisciplinary approach following replication errors in Escherichia coli unveils that many spontaneous mutations originate from inefficient repair, and that repair capacity is variable between single cells within a bacterial population.

MutS and MutL homologs are thought to form a stable complex to execute mismatch repair. This work shows that E. coli MutS only acts as a mismatch-dependent clamp-loader that assembles the MutL sliding clamp.

Using single-cell whole-genome sequencing, we identified and characterized the landscape of somatic single-nucleotide variants (sSNVs) in single cardiomyocytes from individuals across the human lifespan. Aged cardiomyocytes were found to have a higher burden of sSNVs and show mutational signatures that suggest failed repair of oxidative DNA damage.

An elegant cryo-EM and biophysical study unveils the conformational changes of the E. coli MutS mismatch repair factor. This provides a nice follow-up to the recent report from the same group characterizing how MutS scans DNA without initiating repair on correctly base-paired DNA and recruits MutL upon encountering a mismatch.