DNA strained breakage repair in ataxia telangiectasia fibroblast-like cells.

Human diploid fibroblast-like cells derived from four patients with the genetic disease ataxia telangiectasia and from two non-mutant donors were examined for the repair of X-ray induced strand breaks in DNA. The ataxia telangiectasia cultures showed no significant differences from the non-mutant cultures in the kinetics and extent of strand repair. This suggests that the increased spontaneous and X-ray induced chromatid aberrations observed in ataxia telangiectasia cells are not caused by a defect in the repair of single strand breaks as might be suspected from a general model of aberration production.