Bacteria typically have a single origin of replication in a circular chromosome. With fork speeds of up to 1000 nucleotides per second, they can replicate their genome in less than an hour. Eukaryotic DNA replication takes place in only one part of the cell cycle, the S phase. The replication fork in eukaryotes moves about 10 times more slowly than the bacterial replication fork, and the much longer eukaryotic chromosomes each require many replication origins to complete their replication in an S phase, which typically lasts for 8 hours in human cells. The different replication origins in these eukaryotic chromosomes are activated in a sequence, determined in part by the structure of the chromatin, with the most condensed regions of chromatin typically beginning their replication last. After the replication fork has passed, chromatin structure is re-formed by the addition of new histones to the old histones that are directly inherited by each daughter DNA molecule.
Eukaryotes solve the problem of replicating the ends of their linear chromosomes with a specialized end structure, the telomere, maintained by a special nucleotide polymerizing enzyme called telomerase. Telomerase extends one of the DNA strands at the end of a chromosome by using an RNA template that is an integral part of the enzyme itself, producing a highly repeated DNA sequence that typically extends for thousands of nucleotide pairs at each chromosome end. Telomeres have specialized structures that distinguish them from broken ends of chromosomes, ensuring that they are not mistakenly repaired.
Maintaining the genetic stability that an organism needs for its survival requires not only an extremely accurate mechanism for replicating DNA, but also mechanisms for repairing the many accidental lesions that DNA continually suffers. Most such spontaneous changes in DNA are temporary because they are immediately corrected by a set of processes that are collectively called DNA repair. Of the tens of thousands of random changes created every day in the DNA of a human cell by heat, metabolic accidents, radiation of various sorts, and exposure to substances in the environment, only a few (less than 0.02%) accumulate as permanent mutations in the DNA sequence. The rest are eliminated with remarkable efficiency by DNA repair.
The importance of DNA repair is evident from the large investment that cells make in the enzymes that carry it out: several percent of the coding capacity of most genomes is devoted solely to DNA repair functions. The importance of DNA repair is also demonstrated by the increased rate of mutation that follows the inactivation of a DNA repair gene. Many DNA repair proteins and the genes that encode them—which we now know operate in a wide range of organisms, including humans—were originally identified in bacteria by the isolation and characterization of mutants that displayed an increased mutation rate or an increased sensitivity to DNA-damaging agents.
Recent studies of the consequences of a diminished capacity for DNA repair in humans have linked many human diseases with decreased repair (Table 5–2). Thus, we saw previously that defects in a human gene whose product normally functions to repair the mismatched base pairs resulting from DNA replication errors can lead to an inherited predisposition to cancers of the colon and some other organs, reflecting an increased mutation rate. In another human disease, xeroderma pigmentosum (XP), the afflicted individuals have an extreme sensitivity to ultraviolet radiation because they are unable to repair certain DNA photo-products. This repair defect results in an increased mutation rate that leads to serious skin lesions and an increased susceptibility to skin cancers. Finally, mutations in the Brca1 and Brca2 genes compromise a type of DNA repair known as homologous recombination and are a cause of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer.
Without DNA Repair, Spontaneous DNA Damage Would Rapidly Change DNA Sequences
Although DNA is a highly stable material—as required for the storage of genetic information—it is a complex organic molecule that is susceptible, even under normal cell conditions, to spontaneous changes that would lead to mutations if left unrepaired (Figure 5–37 and see Table 5–3). For example, the DNA of each
Figure 5–37 A summary of spontaneous alterations that require DNA repair.