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Stressed? Break-induced replication comes to the rescue
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Stressed? Break-induced replication comes to the rescue

Rosemary S. Lee, Jerzy M. Twarowski and Anna Malkova
DNA repair, Vol.142, 103759
10/2024
DOI: 10.1016/j.dnarep.2024.103759
PMCID: PMC12970614
PMID: 39241677

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Abstract

Break-induced replication (BIR) is a homologous recombination (HR) pathway that repairs one-ended DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs), which can result from replication fork collapse, telomere erosion, and other events. Eukaryotic BIR has been mainly investigated in yeast, where it is initiated by invasion of the broken DNA end into a homologous sequence, followed by extensive replication synthesis proceeding to the chromosome end. Multiple recent studies have described BIR in mammalian cells, the properties of which show many similarities to yeast BIR. While HR is considered as “error-free” mechanism, BIR is highly mutagenic and frequently leads to chromosomal rearrangements—genetic instabilities known to promote human disease. In addition, it is now recognized that BIR is highly stimulated by replication stress (RS), including RS constantly present in cancer cells, implicating BIR as a contributor to cancer genesis and progression. Here, we discuss the past and current findings related to the mechanism of BIR, the association of BIR with replication stress, and the destabilizing effects of BIR on the eukaryotic genome. Finally, we consider the potential for exploiting the BIR machinery to develop anti-cancer therapeutics. •BIR is driven by a migrating bubble with the conservative inheritance of new DNA.•BIR often leads to mutations, chromosome rearrangements, and loss of heterozygosity.•BIR in yeast and humans shares multiple genetic similarities.•Eukaryotes are reluctant to use BIR for repair of collapsed replication forks.•Under replication stress, BIR is readily employed to handle replication fork collapse.
Break-Induced Replication (BIR) cancer chromosome rearrangements genome instability mutations replication stress (RS)

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