Yi-Ying Chiou

Abstract Life adapts to daily environmental changes through circadian rhythms, exhibiting spontaneous oscillations of biological processes. These daily functional oscillations must match the metabolic requirements responding to the time of the day. We focus on the molecular mechanism of how the circadian clock regulates glucose, the primary resource for energy production and other biosynthetic pathways.

Replication-related strand asymmetry of nucleotide excision repair Eukaryotic DNA replication is an asymmetric process on two strands which results in a replication-related bias of mutations between leading and lagging strands. It is not clear whether nucleotide excision repair is influenced by the semi-discontinuous replication process thus contributing to the mutation bias.

In mammalian cells, bulky DNA adducts located in the template but not the coding strand of genes block elongation by RNA polymerase II (RNAPII). The blocked RNAPII targets these transcription-blocking adducts to undergo more rapid excision repair than adducts located elsewhere in the genome. In excision repair, coupled incisions are made in the damaged DNA strand on both sides of the adduct. The fate of RNAPII in the course of this transcription-coupled repair (TCR) pathway is unclear.