During each cell division, more than 3.3 billion base pairs of genomic DNA have to be duplicated and segregated accurately to daughter cells. But what happens when the DNA template is damaged in such a way that the replication machinery gets stuck? To answer this question, scientists in the team of Matthias Mann at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried near Munich, with colleagues in Copenhagen and at Harvard, have analyzed how the protein composition of the DNA replication machinery changes upon encountering damaged DNA.
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