Genome Stability in Drosophila

Abstract Organisms possess various systems to maintain genome stability during mitotic cell division involving replication, meiotic cell division, and the global repair of DNA damage. Among these systems, the mismatch repair (MMR) system plays an important role both in gene conversion during genetic recombination of meiotic cell division and in the protection from replicative infidelity during mitotic cell division. Therefore, MMR systems should be well conserved in almost all living organisms. Numerous investigations have confirmed the involvement of various genes in MMR. In Drosophila, several genes are involved in meiotic recombination and/or mitotic recombination and repair of heteroduplex DNA caused by DNA-damaging factors. In this chapter, MMR activities, such as the repair function in meiotic recombination, mitotic DNA replication, and the induction of mutations are reviewed.