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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Mar 10.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol. 2017 May 17;18(8):495–506. doi: 10.1038/nrm.2017.48

Figure 5 |. Microhomology length requirement of DNA-end joining pathways.

Figure 5 |

Non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) uses short stretches of microhomology (from 0 to 4 bp), whereas alternative end joining (a-EJ) uses <20 bp of microhomology (most commonly 4–6 bp). The single-strand annealing (SSA) pathway uses >20 bp of homology (for SSA, homology is a more appropriate term than microhomology); the relative use of SSA depends on the organism and the length of homology.