Question

For DNA damage that cannot be repaired by direct reversal, such as deamination, oxidation and alkylation, what is the main repair pathway? How conserved is this pathway in various organisms?

Answer 1

There are at least five major DNA repair pathways that is:-

1. Base excision repair(BER)

2. Nucleotides excision repair(NER)

3. Mismatch repair(MMR).

4. Homologous recombination (HR)

5. Non homologous end joining (NHEJ).

- The conservation of different DNA repair pathways in terms of the presence or absence of a perticular protein involved in given pathways , NER and MMR were found to be most conserved pathways which are used in all eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells it contains all the components , while the NHEJ and BER were least conserved pathways of genome maintenance.