Replication, recombination, and repair of DNA are fundamental molecular mechanisms for organisms to maintain (and sometimes intentionally alter) genetic information. Although these processes, individually, have been important subjects of molecular biology since its emergence, we have recently become aware that they are actually much more intimately related to one another than we used to realize. Furthermore, the research fields of DNA replication, recombination, and repair have been growing even more interdisciplinary, with better understanding of molecular mechanisms underlying other pivotal processes, such as chromosome structures and functions, cell cycle and checkpoints, transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of gene expression, and so on. Most importantly, now we know that DNA replication, recombination, repair, and related functions form a sophisticated network in order to maintain, regulate, and even evolve genetic information. Since quite some time ago, perturbation of normal DNA replication, recombination, or the repair process has been implicated in carcinogenesis, mainly through inducing genome instability. However, recent studies have revealed that malfunctioning of the above network system, as a whole, may be implicated in a much wider variety of pathological states of higher organisms (e.g., ageing, and neurological and developmental abnormalities).
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