Question

You derive a cell line from a tumour and discover that it is deficient in DNA helicase activity and DNA repair activity. Is this helicase deficiency likely to affect base excision or nucleotide excision repair? Explain your reasoning.

Answer 1

Yes , this helicase deficiency will likely affect base excision or nucleotide excision repair. This is because Dna helicase are set of important enzymes that are responsible for breaking of hydrogen bonds between the complementary strands so that the strands get copied. They also play a important role in Dna repair mechanism as well.Nucleotide excision repair is a Dna repair mechanism that is involved in Dna repair damage mechanism , base excision repair and DNA mismatch repair. So when these tumors cell lines are being discovered , the deficiency of these Dna helicase and Dna repair activity causes misfunctioning in terms of cells be formed, Nucleotide base excision, repair etc. That's the reason they have become such abnormal tumor cells . So these two machineries are very important as well for proper functioning during replication, recombination or repair.

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