Caixia Guo,1,3 Tie-Shan Tang,2 and Errol C. Friedberg3
1Beijing Institute of Genomics, 2SKLBMB, Institute of Zoology, CAS, 100101 Beijing, China; 3UT Southwestern
Medical Center, Dallas, TX 75390, USA.
Cell 2010 Mar 5; 140(5): 754-754.e1. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2010.02.033
Nucleotide excision repair (NER) was discovered in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes in the 1960s. The process corrects a
wide spectrum of damage to DNA bases that results in distortions in the native conformation of DNA, including damage
induced by ultraviolet (UV) light and by a plethora of chemicals. NER comprises two distinct subpathways. Global genome
repair (GGR) repairs lesions in regions of the genome that are transcriptionally silent, and transcription-coupled repair
(TCR) repairs lesions in regions of the genome that are transcriptionally active. A key difference between these two NER
pathways is the molecular mechanism used to recognize the damaged base.