Now DNA can repair despite their complex structures

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HONG KONG: A team of researchers led by Vasily M. Studitsky, professor at the Lomonosov Moscow State University have shown that it is possible to repair DNA despite their complex structures. Though the repair was carried out in-vitro, the scientists are optimistic that the same mechanism could be repeated in cells.
In AAAS’ first open access online-only journal Science Advances, researchers explain how DNA is bound with proteins in complexes called the nucleosome. Every ~200 base pairs are organized in nucleosomes, consisting of eight histone proteins, which, like the thread on the bobbin, wound double helix of DNA, which is coiled into two supercoiled loops, the researchers explain.
Part of the surface of the DNA helix is hidden, because it interacts with histones. Our entire genome is packed this way, except for the areas, from which the information is being currently read says Studitsky , who is the leading researcher and the head of the Laboratory of Regulation of Transcription and Replication at the Biological Faculty of the Lomonosov Moscow State University.
The dense packing allows DNA molecule with a length of about two meters to fit into a microscopic cell nucleus, but it makes significant surfaces of the DNA inaccessible for the repair enzymes — the proteins that manage the “repair” of damaged DNA regions. The damage of the DNA, if not repaired, leads to accumulation of mutations, cell death, and to the development of various diseases, including neurodegenerative, e.g. Alzheimer’s disease.
A group of researchers, lead by Vasily M. Studitsky, studied the mechanism of detection of single-stranded DNA breaks at which the connection is lost between nucleotides on one strand in the places where the DNA is associated with histones.
Scientists know quite a lot about the mechanism of the repair. It is known that for the synthesis of a protein, information written in the genetic code, which could be imagined as the manual for its assembly where triples of nucleotides match certain amino acids, should be taken out of the nucleus into the cytoplasm of the cell.