The DNA that lies tightly coiled in nearly every human cell is subjected to thousands of insults and injuries from within and without daily, which is why the human body has evolved multiple highly effective mechanisms for repairing DNA damage.
“We have in place exquisite mechanisms to repair DNA breaks, and when those fail, we end up with disease. We accumulate genomic instability, we accumulate mutations, and many diseases happen because of the inability of cells to repair DNA,” says Raul Mostoslavsky, MD, PhD, scientific co-director of the MGH Cancer Center and the Laurel Schwartz Professor of Oncology (Medicine) at Harvard Medical School.
