Investigation of the connection between transcription and DNA damage repair

Homologous recombination (HR) is a repair pathway used by mammalian cells to repair some types of DNA damages. Surprisingly, HR is enhanced by transcription in all cellular organisms, a phenomenon known as transcription-enhanced recombination-TER. The reason for TER is unknown and in this project we want to understand the functions of TER in mammalian cells. In order to do so we have made a HR substrate to study transcription enhanced HR. The aim of the project is to identify which proteins are essential for this process and also to study other aspects of transcription-enhanced recombination, such as to find out what substrates that trigger it. To study TER, a variety of methods are used, including mammalian cell culture, confocal microscopy and molecular biology techniques.