Recombinational Repair of DNA Damage (Molecular Biology Intelligence Unit)

Genetic recombination is still perceived mostly as a means to increase organism's fitness on the evolutionary scale, while DNA repair is thought of as mundane transactions of DNA maintenance. This book attempts a synthesis of these two fields by analysing possible requirements of complex repair reactions and matching the known recombinational enzymes into the recombinational repair pathways. The book classifies serious DNA lesions, traces the evolution of recombinational repair models, introduces the concept of synapsis as the essence of recombinational repair, discusses the biochemical properties of RecA protein, analyses the prokaryotic pathways of recombinational repair and compares the prokaryotic paradigm with what is known about recombinational repair in eukaryotes.