Chemistry of DNA replication and repair

Beáta, Vértessy

Dániel Molnár, Nikolett Nagy

The course provides knowledge of the DNA replication and repair mechanisms, reveals the

structural and enzymatic details and helps to evolve a research perspective. The first part of the course covers DNA replication. In this part, DNA synthesis will be introduced highlighting the structural and molecular details of the proteins taking part in DNA replication. Furthermore, the replication origins in different organisms and replication regulating proteins will be discussed, then the characteristics of eukaryotic replication, cell cycle regulation, the chromatin structure, and the dNTP homeostasis. Importantly, a lot of biomolecular assays and research methods will be presented in every topic. The second part is about DNA repair mechanisms. We will get acquainted with the source of DNA damage and erroneous dNTPs in the genome, and diseases caused by repair defects. After, we will cover the repair mechanisms in detail in the different organisms and the proteins involved in these pathways: base excision repair (BER), nucleotide excision repair (GG-, TC-NER), mismatch repair (MMR), double strand break repair (DSBR, HR, NHEJ). Lastly, we will introduce the CRISPR technology.