The antitumor agent cis-diamminedichloroplatinum(II) (cisplatin) introduces cytotoxic DNA damage predominantly in the form of intrastrand crosslinks between adjacent purines. Binding assays using a series of duplex oligonucleotides containing a single 1,2 diguanyl intrastrand crosslink indicate that human cell extracts contain factors that preferentially recognise this type of damage when the c...

The ERCC1-XPF heterodimer is a structure-specific endonuclease involved in both nucleotide excision repair and interstrand crosslink repair. Mice carrying a genetic defect in Ercc1 display symptoms suggestive of a progressive, segmental progeria, indicating that disruption of one or both of these DNA damage repair pathways accelerates aging. In the hematopoietic system, there are defined age-as...

FANCM, the most highly conserved component of the Fanconi Anaemia (FA) pathway can resolve recombination intermediates and remodel synthetic replication forks. However, it is not known if these activities are relevant to how this conserved protein activates the FA pathway and promotes DNA crosslink repair. Here we use chicken DT40 cells to systematically dissect the function of the helicase and...

Sixteen long-range crosslinks are induced in Escherichia coli 16S rRNA by far-UV irradiation. Crosslinking patterns in two other organisms, Bacillus subtilis and Thermus aquaticus, were investigated to determine if the number and location of crosslinks in E.coli occur because of unusually photoreactive nucleotides at particular locations in the rRNA sequence. Thirteen long-range crosslinks in B...

Environment Agencies from Europe and the US are setting up a network of Linked Environment Data and are looking to crosslink it with Linked Data contributions from the life sciences.