Chinese Journal of Nature ›› 2023, Vol. 45 ›› Issue (1): 22-32.doi: 10.3969/j.issn.0253-9608.2022.03.009

• Review Article • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Advances in single-molecule investigation on DNA damage repair

JIANG Ting,ZHAI Fanfan①②,ZHONG Shanshan,FAN Jun   

  1. ①Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China; ② School of Life Sciences and Engineering, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang 621010, Sichuan Province, China
  • Received:2022-04-14 Online:2023-02-25 Published:2023-02-21

Abstract: Exogenous or endogenous DNA damages occur continuously in all domains of organisms. Defects in DNA damage repair are closely related to many serious diseases even cancers. Along with evolution, biological cells have developed a series of sophisticated repair pathways to remove or tolerate these damages. Different from conventional biochemical and molecular biology methods, cutting-edge single-molecule technologies are employed to investigate the dynamic functionality of DNA repairrelated biomolecules in vitro and in living cells, which is beneficial to understand more adequately the mechanisms of DNA repair pathways. This review focuses on the common types of DNA damage and repair pathways, and describes single-molecule manipulation techniques such as atomic force microscopy, magnetic tweezers, optical tweezers, and single-molecule fluorescence imaging technologies such as total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy, photoactivation localization microscopy, and superresolution tracking microscopy. The researches of DNA repair mechanism in recent years have been presented as well. The longstanding problems about DNA repair studied via single-molecule technology are sorted out. In the end, we prospected single-molecule technology and other interdisciplinary technologies in the investigation of DNA repair mechanism.