DNA mismatch repair (MMR) is a system for recognizing and repairing erroneous insertion, deletion, and mis-incorporation of bases that can arise during DNA replication and recombination, as well as repairing some forms of DNA damage.
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Micrograph showing loss of staining for MLH1 in colorectal adenocarcinoma in keeping with DNA mismatch repair (left of image) and benign colorectal mucosa (right of image).
DNA repair is a collection of processes by which a cell identifies and corrects damage to the DNA molecules that encode its genome. In human cells, both normal metabolic activities and environmental factors such as radiation can cause DNA damage, resulting in tens of thousands of individual molecular lesions per cell per day. Many of these lesions cause structural damage to the DNA molecule and can alter or eliminate the cell's ability to transcribe the gene that the affected DNA encodes. Other lesions induce potentially harmful mutations in the cell's genome, which affect the survival of its daughter cells after it undergoes mitosis. As a consequence, the DNA repair process is constantly active as it responds to damage in the DNA structure. When normal repair processes fail, and when cellular apoptosis does not occur, irreparable DNA damage may occur. This can eventually lead to malignant tumors, or cancer as per the two-hit hypothesis.
DNA damage resulting in multiple broken chromosomes
Structure of the base-excision repair enzyme uracil-DNA glycosylase excising a hydrolytically-produced uracil residue from DNA. The uracil residue is shown in yellow.
DNA ligase, shown above repairing chromosomal damage, is an enzyme that joins broken nucleotides together by catalyzing the formation of an internucleotide ester bond between the phosphate backbone and the deoxyribose nucleotides.
