Regulation of DNA replication licensing.

Department of Molecular Biology, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, 1-20-1 Handayama, Higashi-ku, Hamamatsu 431-3192, Japan. niidah@hama-med.ac.jp

Current drug targets 2012 Dec

filter terms:

In eukaryotic cells, DNA replication is tightly regulated to occur only once per cell cycle. DNA licensing is a mechanism to guarantee this aim; that is, licensing of replication initiation is permitted during late M phase to G1 phase. The license is canceled by the start of DNA replication. Once DNA replication begins, the license is never given until the next late M phase. The licensing corresponds to the process of assembling components of the pre-replication complex (pre-RC) on the replication origin DNA. This pre-RC is the target of several different regulation systems to prevent rereplication of DNA during a single cell cycle. In this review, the regulation mechanisms mainly in mammals to control assembling components of the pre-RC will be discussed.