“This review is unique as it does not focus on one specific repair pathway or lesion, but instead tries to cover the whole field of DNA repair.”

DNA repair is currently a very topical field of interest in toxicology, pharmacology, environmental sciences, and cancer research, as well as fundamental cell biology and genetics, because it plays such an important role in the cell’s response to any form of DNA damage. DNA damage is induced by an innumerable amount of different agents, which include environmental carcinogens (some even present in food and beverages), chemotherapeutic drugs, natural and synthetic toxins, as well as many types of radiation. Thus DNA repair plays a central role in maintaining the integrity of the genome. Since DNA repair, DNA replication and even transcription, are closely interrelating and overlapping processes, DNA repair is a central player in our understanding of how the genome is maintained. This review is unique as it does not focus on one specific repair pathway or lesion, but instead tries to cover the whole field of DNA repair. The relevance of trying to do this is explained by, for instance, the fact that a specific chemotherapeutic drug may induce more than one type of DNA lesion, which will then require multiple repair pathways to remove these lesions from DNA. Therefore, the success of this review could be attributed to the numerous scientific fields that find the information of benefit.

This is a comprehensive review of a rapidly growing scientific field. We address various new findings in this area, such as a very recently discovered repair pathway for DNA alkylation damage, for DNA damage-triggered signaling, the role of inducible functions, and PARP. We also cover the role of error-prone DNA polymerases. Therefore, the review will be useful for scientists working not only on DNA repair itself but also in one of the related fields.

Mechanisms of DNA damage induction and DNA repair are of great importance for mutagenesis, cytotoxicity, genotoxicity, and cancer formation. The development of cellular resistance to irradiation and anticancer drugs, hereditary metabolic disorders and chronic inflammation, as well as aging, have a common basis in one or the other aspect of DNA repair malfunction. Knowledge from DNA repair research will also be increasingly relevant from the point of view of cancer predisposition and cancer therapy. DNA repair is of particular interest for toxicologists because it influences many toxicological disciplines. It is of major relevance in genetic and molecular toxicology and is becoming more and more important in assessing the effects of tumor initiators and promoters—including wounding and inflammatory responses—in organ toxicity, immune response, and cancer formation.