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Clearing jams in copy machinery

Bacteria and humans use a number of tools to direct perhaps the most important function in cells -- the accurate copying of DNA during cell division. New research published this week in Molecular Cell from the laboratory of Rockefeller University's Michael O'Donnell, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, now shows that one of these proteins, the beta sliding clamp, serves as a toolbelt from which the correct proteins are retrieved to enable DNA replication in the face of DNA damage.