title: The multifaceted mismatch-repair system.
abstract: By removing biosynthetic errors from newly synthesized DNA, mismatch repair (MMR) improves the fidelity of DNA replication by several orders of magnitude. Loss of MMR brings about a mutator phenotype, which causes a predisposition to cancer. But MMR status also affects meiotic and mitotic recombination, DNA-damage signalling, apoptosis and cell-type-specific processes such as class-switch recombination, somatic hypermutation and triplet-repeat expansion. This article reviews our current understanding of this multifaceted DNA-repair system in human cells.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Molecular Cancer Research, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland. jiricny@imcr.unizh.ch
authors.forename: Josef
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jiricny
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D020137:Base Pair Mismatch / Q000235:genetics*; D004260:DNA Repair / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology*; D004351:Drug Resistance / Q000235:genetics; D005092:Exonucleases / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D008958:Models, Molecular; D018809:Proliferating Cell Nuclear Antigen / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D018809:Proliferating Cell Nuclear Antigen; D005092:Exonucleases