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Molecular and Cellular Biology, December 1999, p. 8353-8360, Vol. 19, No. 12
0270-7306/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Multiple Pathways for Repair of DNA Double-Strand Breaks in Mammalian Chromosomes

Yunfu Lin, Tamas Lukacsovich, and Alan S. Waldman*

Department of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208

Received 30 April 1999/Returned for modification 10 June 1999/Accepted 9 September 1999

To study repair of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) in mammalian chromosomes, we designed DNA substrates containing a thymidine kinase (TK) gene disrupted by the 18-bp recognition site for yeast endonuclease I-SceI. Some substrates also contained a second defective TK gene sequence to serve as a genetic donor in recombinational repair. A genomic DSB was induced by introducing endonuclease I-SceI into cells containing a stably integrated DNA substrate. DSB repair was monitored by selection for TK-positive segregants. We observed that intrachromosomal DSB repair is accomplished with nearly equal efficiencies in either the presence or absence of a homologous donor sequence. DSB repair is achieved by nonhomologous end-joining or homologous recombination, but rarely by nonconservative single-strand annealing. Repair of a chromosomal DSB by homologous recombination occurs mainly by gene conversion and appears to require a donor sequence greater than a few hundred base pairs in length. Nonhomologous end-joining events typically involve loss of very few nucleotides, and some events are associated with gene amplification at the repaired locus. Additional studies revealed that precise religation of DNA ends with no other concomitant sequence alteration is a viable mode for repair of DSBs in a mammalian genome.


* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Dept. of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina, 700 Sumter St., Columbia, SC 29208. Phone: (803) 777-8405. Fax: (803) 777-4002. E-mail: awaldman{at}sc.edu.


Molecular and Cellular Biology, December 1999, p. 8353-8360, Vol. 19, No. 12
0270-7306/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.



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