Figure 3.

The choices of ionising radiation- (IR-) induced DNA repair pathways. The schematic shows that there are four key factors, including the chromatin state, the type and distribution of IR-induced DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs), the DNA-end structure, and the DNA-end resection, which can determine the repair pathway choices. Many critical proteins that are directly or indirectly involved in the above processes also play a critical role in determining the pathway choices. The more detailed discussions can be found in the main text.