Although the human population is predicted to “peak” by 2050, further advances in yield will be required to feed this population. Crop breeding programs have provided remarkable advances in food quality and yield over the last century. Due to the high conservation of DNA repair processes and factors mediating them among eukaryotes, genes and proteins that have been identified in model species may serve to identify homologous sequences in other species, including crop plants, in which these mechanisms are poorly understood. Moreover, abnormalities in DNA repair which proved to be lethal for animal models are tolerated in plant genomes, although sensitivity to DNA damaging agents is retained. However, the relatively small size of the Arabidopsis genome, its rapid life cycle and availability of various transformation methods make this species an attractive model for the study of eukaryotic DNA repair mechanisms and mutagenesis. Consequently, our knowledge about DNA repair in plant genomes - particularly in the genomes of crop plants - is by far more limited. The description of these processes in plants, in contrast, was initiated relatively recently and has been focused largely on the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana.
DNA repair processes have been characterized in bacterial, fungal, and mammalian model systems. It is crucial for all organisms, including plants, to develop efficient mechanisms for maintenance of the genome integrity. Mutagenic agents cause reduced stability of plant genome and have a deleterious effect on development, and in the case of crop species lead to yield reduction. The genomic integrity of every organism is constantly challenged by endogenous and exogenous DNA-damaging factors. 2Department of Genetics, Faculty of Biology and Environment Protection, University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland.1Department of Molecular Genetics, Institute of Plant Physiology and Genetics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria.
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