Mechanism of Genome Protection by Homologous Recombination Repair: A single molecule DNA-protein interaction study

Changes in our hereditary information are welcome in terms of generating diversity and driving evolution of the species. At the same time the integrity of the genome should not be compromised. As described in chapter 1, a number of compounds react with DNA thereby causing damaging lesions. If those lesions are left unrepaired, they can interfere with replication, transcription and lead to deregulations of their gene products. These in turn can cause diseases and aging. There are DNA repair mechanisms in place that repair DNA lesions and thus maintain and protect genome integrity. This thesis focuses on the repair of double-stranded DNA breaks by homologous recombination.