Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 20, 2025

Assessing Somatic Hypermutation in Ramos B Cells after Overexpression or Knockdown of Specific Genes
Published on: November 1, 2011
Hypermutation in single-stranded DNA
Natalie Saini1, Dmitry A Gordenin1
1Genome Integrity and Structural Biology Laboratory, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, US National Institutes of Health, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
Abstract:
Regions of genomic DNA can become single-stranded in the course of normal replication and transcription as well as during DNA repair. Abnormal repair and replication intermediates can contain large stretches of persistent single-stranded DNA, which is extremely vulnerable to DNA damaging agents and hypermutation. Since such single-stranded DNA spans only a fraction of the genome at a given instance, hypermutation in these regions leads to tightly-spaced mutation clusters. This phenomenon of hypermutation in single-stranded DNA has been documented in several experimental models as well as in cancer genomes. Recently, hypermutated single-stranded RNA viral genomes also have been documented. Moreover, indications of hypermutation in single-stranded DNA may also be found in the human germline. This review will summarize key current knowledge and the recent developments in understanding the diverse mechanisms and sources of ssDNA hypermutation.
Related Concept Videos
Spontaneous and Induced Mutations
Overview of DNA Repair
Chemically...
Mismatch Repair
The Mutator Protein Family Plays a Key Role in DNA Mismatch Repair
The human genome has more than 3 billion base pairs of DNA per cell. Prior to cell division, that vast amount of genetic...
Mismatch Repair
Fixing Double-strand Breaks
Homologous Recombination

