Patients suffering from the rare genetic diseases of Bloom's syndrome or Werner's syndrome have a faulty RecQ helicase and are more prone to cancer. Our research is aimed at understanding why these individuals run a higher risk of developing cancer as it could have implications for the development of cancer in the general population.

We use the fission yeast S. pombe as a model system to investigate when in the cell RecQ helicases are required. Our work suggests that RecQ helicases have important roles both in the accurate replication of DNA and also in the regulation of mitotic recombination. In particular, RecQ is required to coordinate the repair of DNA damage with replication. In the absence of RecQ, yeast cells are unable to regulate recombination correctly, and use inappropriate processes to repair the damage both during DNA replication and in interphase. This leads to an increase in errors and, thus, indirectly to cell death (or an increase in cancer in humans). We are particularly interested in how RecQ helicases regulate recombination and our work suggests that RecQ helicases are important both to stabilise a stalled replication fork at a site of DNA damage and also to resolve recombination structures that arise under these circumstances.