UV-DDB: A molecular machine linking DNA repair with ubiquitination

UV-damaged DNA-binding protein (UV-DDB) is characterized by its very high affinity and specificity for UV-damaged DNA. Although precise roles for UV-DDB have been quite enigmatic since its discovery, accumulating evidence indicates that it promotes recognition of and protein assembly on UV photolesions in the global genome nucleotide excision repair pathway. The recently solved crystal structure of UV-DDB bound to DNA containing a (6-4) photoproduct has revealed that the DDB2/XPE subunit is responsible for the interaction, which induces flipping out of the two affected bases into a binding pocket, indicating that UV-DDB has evolved especially to recognize dinucleotide lesions, like UV photolesions. Taken together with the previously solved structure of the DDB1-CUL4A E3 ligase, this study has also novel insights into how this factor coordinates ubiquitination of various protein substrates around the site of DNA damage.