#Id: 6151
#Unit 3. Fundamental Processes
Even if cells cannot repair these lesions, there is a fail-safe mechanism that allows the replication machinery to bypass these sites of damage or tolerate the DNA damage. One mechanism of DNA damage tolerance is translesion synthesis. Although this mechanism is, as we shall see, highly error-prone and thus likely to introduce mutations, translesion synthesis spares the cell the worse fate of an incompletely replicated chromosome. A key feature of DNA damage tolerance is that the DNA lesion remains in the genome. DNA repair pathways can subsequently correct the lesion.
