Mechanisms of genome maintenance and rearrangement: current research and recent advances in DNA repair and recombination.

The topics of the talks at the annual DNA Repair Network Meeting at City University, London were as usual wide-ranging and provided an absorbing programme. Covered in the 17 talks were the autoproteolysis of O(6)-methylguanine DNA alkyltransferase in Escherichia coli; identification of new intermediates in meiotic recombination in Saccharomyces cerevisiae; the SMC (structural maintenance of chromosomes) family of proteins in Schizosaccharomyces pombe; transposition and V(D)J recombination; mammalian Rad51 foci formation in Rad54, Rad52, XRCC2 and XRCC3 mutants; biochemical analysis of DNA-PK, ATM (ataxia telangiectasia mutated) and ATR (AT related); other human DNA repair deficiencies and their incidence, including xeroderma pigmentosum and a new DNA ligase IV-deficient patient, and back, once again, to alkyltransferase, this time in humans and its manipulation for engineering drug resistance in bone marrow for cancer treatment.