Important DNA Repair Mechanism Linked To Premature Aging Yields

Important DNA Repair Mechanism Linked To Premature Aging Yields: "The first step in TCR is the recognition that an RNAPII is stalled. Subsequently one of several things must happen. Most theoretical models have assumed that the stalled RNAPII has to be degraded and moved out of the way so the lesion can be repaired, after which transcription of the gene must start over with a new RNAPII.
Other possibilities are that the original RNAPII is somehow made to start up again, bypassing the lesion, or that the RNAPII is made to back up, digesting some of the messenger RNA it has already made, and have another go at transcription. In these cases, the likelihood of errors in the transcribed RNA and eventually in the resulting protein is increased.
What Cooper and her colleagues found, however, was a different, unexpected path. It appears that instead of being removed, the stalled RNAPII can be left in place and remodeled by the protein machinery of transcription-couple repair, so that repairs to the DNA can proceed without the loss of the messenger RNA that has already been formed."