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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Jun 1.
Published in final edited form as: Trends Genet. 2014 May 1;30(6):245–253. doi: 10.1016/j.tig.2014.03.005

Figure 1. R-loop formation and potential genome instability outcomes.

Figure 1

(A) The structure of an R-loop. (B) RNA processing steps and other events that are required to prevent abnormal R-loop formation. The majority of the known factors are involved in co-transcriptional events but there are also other DNA replication and repair complexes such as DNA polymerase (DNAP) that are implicated in R-loop formation. (C) Mutational events arising from R-loops that lead to genome instability. The left diagram shows one way in which collision between replication and transcriptional machinery can result in chromosome instability. The right diagram shows how the exposed ssDNA in an R-loop can be damaged by cytidine deaminases and genotoxins to culminate in chromosome instability.