Investigation of DNA repair pathway activity.

DNA is constantly being damaged from endogenous and exogenous sources and efficient repair of different types of DNA lesions is essential for the survival of the organism. Dictyostelium is highly resistant to DNA damage and its genome sequence has revealed the presence of multiple repair pathways conserved with vertebrates but lost in other genetically tractable invertebrate models. As such, Dictyostelium is a powerful model organism to study selected human DNA repair pathways and may provide insights into the molecular basis of how cells become resistant to DNA damage.