Some important advances in DNA repair study on the mammalian cells

In the recent years the study of DNA damage and repair in the mammalian cells has gone deeply at gene level and got the following advances: (1) For a long time DNA has been considered to be an uniform unit in case of damage and repair. Now this concept should be replaced by the non-random distribution of damage and heterogenous repair in the genome. These would allow us to study cellular mutagenesis, carcinogenesis, aging and dying processes in great detail, and would be beneficial to the elucidation of mechanisms of radiation sickness and chemical toxicology. (2) The advent of new techniques in molecular biology has made it possible to isolate and clone the human DNA repair genes. Up to now more than ten human DNA repair genes have been cloned and these works would have an important impact on the theoretical and practical study in this field. Because DNA repair system is very complicate, voluminous work should be done in the future. (3) The technique of gene transfer has been efficiently used in the study of DNA repair in mammalian cells and has made great contribution in the cellular engineering. It could modify the genetic behavior of the gene-accepting cells, and enhance the DNA repair ability to physical and chemical damages. Human gene therapy for DNA deficient diseases is now on the day