Understanding DNA Repair in Hyperthermophilic Archaea: Persistent Gaps and Other Reasons to Focus on the Fork

Figure 5

Regeneration of broken replication forks by HR functions. (a) The products of archaeal replication fork breakage proposed in Figure 2 are expected to retain various lesions, gaps, and overhangs; possible structures are illustrated to the left of each bracket. These various structures must be converted to a “clean” 3′ extension on the ds end and an intact continuous duplex with which it can recombine. (b) Proteins of double-strand-break repair (homologous recombination) promote subsequent reassembly of the replication fork. The steps depicted here are those commonly proposed for bacteria and eukaryotes [37, 38, 52]. As in previous figures, broken lines indicate the remainder of the chromosome, and arrowheads mark 3′ ends.

(a)

(b)