Abstract
Interstrand crosslinks (ICLs) represent a lethal form of DNA damage, a property exploited by anticancer chemotherapies. To fix such lesions cells co-opte enzymes from different classical DNA repair pathways that together form an organism’s ‘ICL REPAIRtoire’. Using biochemical, cell biology and CRISPR-based functional genomic approaches, we plan to unravel how Trypanosoma cruzi, the parasite responsible for Chagas disease, repairs ICLs and investigate the interaction and interplay of the components that constitute this pathogen’s ‘ICL REPAIRtoire’. This will facilitate comparative studies against the ICL repair systems from other organisms, with any differences potentially exploitable in developing new drugs targeting Chagas disease.
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