[LECTURE] DNA Mismatch Repair in Cancer Susceptibility and Therapy

Host：Dr. Guo-Min Li

Speaker：Guo-Min Li, Ph.D.

  Professor of Biochemistry

  University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine

Time：2016-4-14（Thursday），13:00-14:00 pm

Location：East Chemistry Building, 101 Lecture Hall

Correspondence：Daochun Kong,   Center for Life Sciences

Abstract

DNA mismatch repair (MMR) is an important genome maintenance system that ensures replication fidelity by specifically removing misincorporated nucleotides in the newly synthesized DNA strand during DNA replication. Defects in MMR genes lead to a mutator phenotype and are the genetic basis of many types of hereditary and sporadic human cancers. However, not all cancers displaying a classical MMR deficient phenotype have identifiable mutations in MMR genes, suggesting a novel mechanism responsible for this subset of cancer. In this presentation, I will discuss our recent discoveries that MMR function is regulated by posttranslational modifications, including histone methylation and phosphorylation of MMR proteins, and how we could use these discoveries in cancer diagnosis and therapy.

Host CV

Dr. Guo-Min Li studies genome instability and cancer, with a focus on DNA mismatch repair (MMR), an important cellular pathway that ensures replication fidelity by correcting mispairs created during DNA replication. Dr. Li has made seminal contributions to the field, including discovering MMR defects in colorectal tumors displaying microsatellite instability (MSI), identifying and characterizing the majority of human MMR components, reconstituting the human MMR reaction in vitro, and identifying the apoptotic function of MMR.