Figure 1.

Bypass of leading-strand template damage by leading-strand repriming in E. coli. Following a collision with a leading-strand lesion, template unwinding and lagging-strand synthesis are believed to continue beyond the site of damage. (A) Repriming of the leading strand can occur downstream from the damage, which enables replication to continue without the replisome dissociating from the DNA (Yeeles and Marians 2011). (B) Should the replisome dissociate following the collision, the replication restart protein PriC can reload DnaB, which enables replication to be reinitiated by priming the leading strand downstream from the damage (Heller and Marians 2006b).