POLQ - DNA polymerase theta

Function

DNA polymerase that promotes microhomology-mediated end-joining (MMEJ), an alternative non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) machinery triggered in response to double-strand breaks in DNA (PubMed:25642963, PubMed:25643323). MMEJ is an error-prone repair pathway that produces deletions of sequences from the strand being repaired and promotes genomic rearrangements, such as telomere fusions, some of them leading to cellular transformation (PubMed:25642963, PubMed:25643323). POLQ acts as an inhibitor of homology-recombination repair (HR) pathway by limiting RAD51 accumulation at resected ends (PubMed:25642963). POLQ-mediated MMEJ may be required to promote the survival of cells with a compromised HR repair pathway, thereby preventing genomic havoc by resolving unrepaired lesions (By similarity). The polymerase acts by binding directly the 2 ends of resected double-strand breaks, allowing microhomologous sequences in the overhangs to form base pairs. It then extends each strand from the base-paired region using the opposing overhang as a template. Requires partially resected DNA containing 2 to 6 base pairs of microhomology to perform MMEJ (PubMed:25643323). The polymerase activity is highly promiscuous: unlike most polymerases, promotes extension of ssDNA and partial ssDNA (pssDNA) substrates (PubMed:18503084, PubMed:21050863, PubMed:22135286). Also exhibits low-fidelity DNA synthesis, translesion synthesis and lyase activity, and it is implicated in interstrand-cross-link repair, base excision repair and DNA end-joining (PubMed:14576298, PubMed:18503084, PubMed:19188258, PubMed:24648516). Involved in somatic hypermutation of immunoglobulin genes, a process that requires the activity of DNA polymerases to ultimately introduce mutations at both A/T and C/G base pairs (By similarity).

Gene Regulons