DNA repair hubs

        It is no secret that DNA has a tendency to make a few errors during replication or by some external force, which can cause mutations or genetic diseases to proliferate through the body. There are proteins that scan DNA strands for these errors and repair them which is why mutations are not a common phenomenon. However, the actual process of DNA repair remained a bit hazy until now.

    A team led by Dr. Kim L. de Luca from the Hubrecht Institute set out to pinpoint how cells repair DNA. The main problem with observing DNA repair is finding a repair site in the first place. Previous methods of observing DNA repair looked at an average across many different cells but De Luca's team focused on the individual cells and mapped out where repair proteins would attach to DNA, these locations being being the place where the DNA had an error or broke. This revealed that it wasn't a singular protein that would repair the DNA but was actually a cooperation. The proteins would form hubs nicknamed "repair cafés" that would repair multiple errors or breaks within the DNA. 

    To me, it is interesting how much of genetics we knew happened but could never prove or observe it until very recently. We knew that DNA was repaired by specialized proteins but this idea of "repair cafés" formed by several repair proteins is, while following the same concept, a completely different view. It leads to even more questions and ideas of what these hubs can be used for. The team has already thought of pursuing this idea to see if it can lead to an effective treatment to cancer which is notoriously caused by DNA errors. Maybe if we can increase the effectiveness of these hubs, we can prevent errors from getting to the point of no return.