Role of polymerase ? in DNA metabolism and genomic instability / 中国病理生理杂志

ABSTRACT

The major role of DNA polymerase ? was thought to be limited in its involvement in short patch base excision repair by removing 5'-deoxyribose phosphate and base insertion. However, the recent researches indicate that polymerase ? might take part in a wide spectrum of DNA metabolism reactions, including long patch base excision repair, DNA replication, recombination, meiosis and transleisional DNA synthesis. Because of its wide and important cellular function, an inappropriate intracellular polymerase ? level might be associated with genomic instability. Down-regulation or mutation of polymerase ? is mutagenic due to deficient in DNA repair, while overexpression of this error-prone ? polymerase might perturb the normal function of other accurate polymerases and cause genomic instability as well.