Guardian of Genome Integrity: Cohesin and DNA Damage Repair (Paperback)

Chromosome structure is shaped by the protein complexes that contain members of the Structural Maintenance of Chromosome (SMC) family. One of these protein complexes called cohesin tethers replicated chromosomes to mediate sister chromatid cohesion.Sister chromatid cohesion was thought to play only an indirect role in DNA damage repair. In this book, we report our detailed analysis of cohesin in response to a particular type of DNA damage called DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs).There are three major conclusions from this work. First, DSBs induce de novo recruitment of cohesins to the broken chromosomes. Second, DSBs induce activation of sister chromatid cohesion by a replication-independent mechanism. Finally, the DSB-induced cohesin is necessary for the efficient repair of DNA breaks. Altogether, our results implicate the direct involvement of cohesin complex in the maintenance of genomic integrity upon DNA breaks and suggest that perturbations of DSB-specific cohesin pathway could play a role in tumorigenesi