Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 15, 2004

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

DNA repair is a constantly operating process in the cell essential to survival because it protects the genome from damage. In human cells, both normal metabolic activities and environmental factors (such as UV rays) can cause DNA damage, resulting in as much as 500,000 individual molecular lesions per cell per day. These lesions cause structural damage to the DNA molecule, and can dramatically alter the cell's way of reading the information encoded in its genes. Consequently, the DNA repair process must be constantly operating, to rapidly correct any damage in the DNA structure.

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