News item posted on 2014-05-16

CSB Research Spotlight - Martin Egli

The VUMC Reporter recently featured Martin Egli, Professor of Biochemistry, in Aliqouts for his “Paper of the Week” published online April 23 by the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Egli and his colleagues used kinetic and mass-spectrometric studies to demonstrate that a member of the Y-polymerase family, human polymerase eta (hPol-eta), bypasses 8-oxoG in a largely error-free manner by preferentially incorporating dCTP (one of the DNA building blocks) opposite 8-oxoG. The findings provide a kinetic and structural framework for understanding how hPol-eta accurately bypasses the most common oxidative DNA lesion.

As an X-ray crystallographer, Prof. Egli is involved in a number of ongoing collaborations to determine how cancer-causing chemicals interact with DNA to produce mutations. Visit the Egli Lab homepage for more information about his current research.


Author: Stephen M. Doster