Analyses of ancient dog DNA suggest that dogs were likely domesticated from Eurasian wolves around 23,000 years ago, possibly in Siberia.
Image credit: Pixabay/Chiemsee2016.
Edited by Richard D. Kolodner, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, La Jolla, CA, and approved March 5, 2012 (received for review September 19, 2011)
Abstract
Mismatch repair (MMR) is a major DNA repair pathway in cells from all branches of life that removes replication errors in a strand-specific manner, such that mismatched nucleotides are preferentially removed from the newly replicated strand of DNA. Here we demonstrate a role for MMR in helping create new phenotypes in nondividing cells. We show that mispairs in yeast that escape MMR during replication can later be subject to MMR activity in a replication strand-independent manner in nondividing cells, resulting in either fully wild-type or mutant DNA sequence. In one case, this activity is responsible for what appears to be adaptive mutation. This replication strand-independent MMR activity could contribute to the formation of tumors arising in nondividing cells and could also contribute to mutagenesis observed during somatic hypermutation of Ig genes.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: gcrouse{at}biology.emory.edu.
Author contributions: Y.W.K. and G.F.C. designed research; G.P.R., N.V.R., G.B., and N.C.R. performed research; and G.F.C. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1115361109/-/DCSupplemental.
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
Mismatch repair-dependent mutagenesis in nondividing cells
Sign up for Article Alerts
Jump to section
You May Also be Interested in
Pollen seasons have lengthened by 20 days and pollen concentrations have increased by 21% from 1990 to 2018 in North America, and anthropogenic climate change is a likely factor.
Image credit: William R. L. Anderegg.
Conservation efforts must be better coordinated across national borders, and the impacts of border barriers on species must be mitigated as the climate changes.
Image credit: Stephen G. Willis.
Vaccination efforts must be coupled with aggressive community-based COVID point-of-care testing so that cases of asymptomatic infection are rapidly identified.
Image credit: Shutterstock/zstock.
The innovative solution entails simply drying and using whole bacteria, with no need to separate and purify the reagent products.
Image credit: Shutterstock/motorolka.