UV light damages the DNA of skin cells, which can lead to skin cancer. But this process is counteracted by DNA repair machinery, acting as a molecular sunscreen. It has been unclear, however, how repair proteins work on DNA tightly packed in chromatin, where access to DNA damage is restricted by protein packaging. Using cryo electron microscopy, researchers from the Thomä group at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI) have identified a new mechanism whereby repair proteins detect and bind to damaged DNA that is densely packed in nucleosomes.
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Source: Phys.org