A research group led by Waseda's Professor Hitoshi Kurumizaka and Assistant Professor Akihisa Osakabe has discovered the mechanism by which DNA damaged by ultraviolet (UV) light is recognized for repair.

This year three scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for mapping at a molecular level how damaged DNA was repaired. Nucleotide excision repair is a multistep process that repairs UV-damaged DNA and safeguards genetic information. Building on that research, the group led by Kurumizaka and Osakabe discovered that UV-damaged DNA was very flexible, and that UV-DDB, the surveillance protein in nucleotide excision repair, recognizes the damaged DNA structure within chromatin. This discovery will advance the understanding of skin cancer in xeroderma pigmentosum patients with a gene mutation caused by deficiencies in nucleotide excision repair and provide key information for new treatments of skin cancer.

Collaborators on this research include Associate Professor Wataru Kagawa (Meisei University), Professor Kaoru Sugasawa (Kobe University), Professor Shigenori Iwai (Osaka University), Professor Fumio Hanaoka (Gakushuin University), and Dr. Nicolas H. Thoma (Group Leader at Friedrich Miesher Institute for Biomedical Research).

This research was published in Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group) under the title "Structural basis of pyrimidine-pyrimidone (6-4) photoproduct recognition by UV-DDB in the nucleosome."

http://www.nature.com/articles/srep16330