Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, Massachusetts 02129, USA.
Department of Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA.
Genes Dev. 2020 Jul 1;34(13-14):863-864. doi: 10.1101/gad.339861.120.
R loops arise from hybridization of RNA transcripts with template DNA during transcription. Unrepaired R loops lead to transcription-replication collisions, causing DNA damage and genomic instability. In this issue of , Pérez-Calero and colleagues (pp. 898-912) identify UAP56 as a cotranscriptional RNA-DNA helicase that unwinds R loops. They found that UAP56 helicase activity is required to remove R loops formed from different sources and prevent R-loop accumulation genome-wide at actively transcribed genes.
R 环是在转录过程中 RNA 转录本与模板 DNA 杂交形成的。未修复的 R 环会导致转录-复制碰撞,从而导致 DNA 损伤和基因组不稳定性。在本期的 中,Pérez-Calero 及其同事(第 898-912 页)鉴定出 UAP56 是一种共转录 RNA-DNA 解旋酶,可解开 R 环。他们发现 UAP56 解旋酶活性对于去除来自不同来源的 R 环以及防止活跃转录基因的全基因组中 R 环积累是必需的。