DNA damage checkpoint inactivation: Adaptation and recovery

The DNA damage checkpoint is a stress response pathway detecting pathological structures of nuclear DNA and inducing appropriate responses. These responses include cell cycle arrests, histone modifications, changes in the transcription programme and post-translational modifications of proteins involved in DNA repair. Inactivation of the DNA damage checkpoint responses can occur under two circumstances: either DNA damage has disappeared and the whole pathway is inactivated in a process termed recovery, or DNA damage persists but all or part of the pathway is nevertheless inactivated, which is called adaptation. We present here a review of these inactivating processes of the DNA damage checkpoint primarily in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae but also with reference to studies in Schizosaccharomyces pombe and in animal cells. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.