LSD Seminar: Priscilla Cooper: Novel Intersections of DNA Repair with Replication and Transcription in Mammalian Cells

Seminar | June 5 | 4-5 p.m. | 141 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Location: 717 Potter Street, Berkeley, CA 94720

Speaker/Performer: Priscilla Cooper, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Sponsor: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Our genomes are constantly subject to attack by both environmental and endogenously generated agents that damage the DNA. The vital DNA transaction processes of replication and transcription are highly sensitive to genomic perturbations. Depending on the cell/tissue context, unrepaired DNA damage can cause mutations, genomic instability, cellular senescence, or apoptosis, resulting in cancer and/or accelerated aging. To counteract the ubiquitous occurrence of DNA damage, multiple DNA repair systems have evolved, each specialized to remove certain classes of lesions or to function during different cell cycle phases. These different repair “pathways” have generally been considered as separate entities. However, unilateral actions of individual DNA repair pathways are not sufficient to maintain replication forks and resolve stalled transcription in the complex nucleo-protein structures that exist in the cell. New findings will be discussed which lead to the hypothesis that a sophisticated strategy is invoked to integrate multiple repair processes for the preservation of transcription and replication.

Event Contact: jnovak@lbl.gov, 510-495-2824