DNA Repair Mechanisms

DNA undergoes a wide range of chemical reactions every day, and such DNA lesions might have deleterious consequences as they not only affect cellular components and biological processes but can also accumulate permanently in the genome. Since DNA alterations eventually lead to multiple detrimental consequences, including genomic instability and cancer predisposition, these lesions must be efficiently detected and repaired by tightly regulated mechanisms to maintain genome integrity. Various DNA repair mechanisms contribute to the correction of the alterations that occur every day to prevent genomic instability, providing key insights into genome editing. Genome editing is a significant exogenous mutagen, in which conventional editing strategies cause double-strand breaks, and nickases induce single-strand breaks, albeit base editing depends on the modulation of base excision repair, and prime editing results in mismatches. A comprehensive understanding of DNA repair mechanisms is strategically important for genome editing applications. In this chapter, we discuss the pivotal DNA repair mechanisms to provide a better insight into the role of DNA repair mechanisms in genome editing.