The Effect of Atypical Nucleic Acids Structures in DNA Double Strand Break Repair: A Tale of R-loops and G-Quadruplexes

Rosa Camarillo; Sonia Jimeno; Pablo Huertas

doi:10.3389/fgene.2021.742434

The Effect of Atypical Nucleic Acids Structures in DNA Double Strand Break Repair: A Tale of R-loops and G-Quadruplexes

Front Genet. 2021 Oct 8:12:742434. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2021.742434. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Rosa Camarillo^{1

2}, Sonia Jimeno^{1

2}, Pablo Huertas^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Departamento de Genética, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain.
² Centro Andaluz de Biología Molecular y Medicina Regenerativa-CABIMER, Universidad de Sevilla-CSIC-Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla, Spain.

Abstract

The fine tuning of the DNA double strand break repair pathway choice relies on different regulatory layers that respond to environmental and local cues. Among them, the presence of non-canonical nucleic acids structures seems to create challenges for the repair of nearby DNA double strand breaks. In this review, we focus on the recently published effects of G-quadruplexes and R-loops on DNA end resection and homologous recombination. Finally, we hypothesized a connection between those two atypical DNA structures in inhibiting the DNA end resection step of HR.

Keywords: DNA double strand break repair; DNA end resection; G-quadruplex; R-loops; homologous recombination (HR).