Base excision repair

Base excision repairs DNA T C T T C T

G G
when a base of a nucleotide is
damaged, for example cytosine. 1 A G A 2 A G A
C U

Cytosine can easily lose an Uracil cannot form a

amino group, forming a base base pair with guanine.
called uracil.

T C T T C T T C T
3
G
4 G
5
G

A G A A G A A G A
C

An enzyme, glycosylase, Another couple of enzymes DNA polymerase fills in the

discovers the defect and remove the rest of the gap and the DNA strand is
excises the base of uracil. nucleotide from the DNA strand. sealed by DNA ligase.

Illustration: © Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences