Abstract 1523 Genetic screening reveals critical roles for Drosophila melanogaster polymerase eta and CG7139 in DNA alkylation damage tolerance

Introduction: The study of mutagenesis and DNA repair can lead to the identification of genes and proteins that can be targeted to specifically induce cell death or reduce mutagenesis. The DNA repair proteins that were examined in this study were Rev1, which has a carboxy-terminal domain (CTD) that can recruit error-prone translesion polymerases to DNA lesions; polymerase eta (Polη), which is a translesion polymerase; and CG7139, which is predicted to be a DNA endonuclease. The purpose of this study was to further characterize the role of DNA repair proteins Polη and CG7139 in DNA alkylation damage tolerance in Drosophila melanogaster.