Mutagenesis Advance Access originally published online on April 13, 2006
Mutagenesis 2006 21(3):173-178; doi:10.1093/mutage/gel020
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Base excision repair fidelity in normal and cancer cells
1 Radiation and Genome Stability Unit, Medical Research Council Harwell, Oxfordshire OX11 0RD, UK 2 Laboratory of Radiation Biology, Graduate School of Sciences, Kyoto University, Kitashirakawa-Oiwakecho Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan
In mammalian cells, base excision repair (BER) is the major repair pathway involved in the removal of non-bulky damaged nucleotides. The fidelity of BER is dependent on the polymerization step, where the major BER DNA polymerase (Pol ß) must incorporate the correct WatsonCrick base paired nucleotide into the one nucleotide repair gap. Recent studies have indicated that expression of some Pol ß variants or changes in expression of wild-type Pol ß protein, frequently found in cancer cells, can lead to DNA repair synthesis errors and confers to cells a mutator phenotype.
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