into cells – including human cells – could repair DNA damage, but the process was inefficient and there were questions about whether the process could occur naturally.
To find out whether cells could use endogenous RNA transcripts to repair DNA damage, she and graduate students Havva Keskin and Ying Shen – who are first and second authors on the paper – devised experiments using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is widely used in the lab for genetics and genome engineering. The researchers developed a strategy for distinguishing repair by endogenous RNA from repair by the normal DNA-based mechanisms in the budding yeast cells, including using mutants that lacked the ability to convert the RNA into a DNA copy. They then induced a DNA double-strand break in the yeast genome and observed whether the organism could survive and grow by repairing the damage using only transcript RNA within the cells.