The Greek Goddess, Artemis, reveals the secrets of her cleavage.
A recent paper in Cell by Ma et al. [Cell 8 (2002) 781] showed that the protein Artemis cleaves a hairpin intermediate during V(D)J recombination. Peter O'Neill and Penny Jeggo discuss this finding in the light of evidence that Artemis also functions to repair radiation damage [Cell 105 (2001) 177]. The findings suggest that Artemis may function in double strand break repair by "tidying up" double strand ends with associated base damage. The development of genetic diversity during immune development, therefore, seems to exploit damage response mechanisms that function to maintain genetic stability in other cell lineages.
Jeggo
Penny
P
Genome Damage and Stability Centre, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, UK. p.a.jeggo@sussex.ac.uk
O'Neill
Peter
P
D000818:Animals; D004247:DNA / Q000528:radiation effects; D004249:DNA Damage; D004260:DNA Repair / Q000502:physiology*; D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins; D004720:Endonucleases; D006801:Humans; D009687:Nuclear Proteins / Q000502:physiology*
D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins; D009687:Nuclear Proteins; D004247:DNA; C426344:DCLRE1C protein, human; D004720:Endonucleases