The role of recombination in hairpin telomere maintenance.

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, is a well-established natural science model system for the study of DNA hairpin (hp) telomeres. Hairpin telomeres are an unusual solution to the problem of copying linear DNAs. Hairpin telomeres are closed hairpins at linear chromosome or plasmid termini. They eliminate the free end normally present in linear DNAs and, thereby, eliminate the copying problem that would result in the progressive loss of information at the DNA ends every time the cells divide. DNA copying in the linear chromosome is bidirectional and starts in the middle of the DNA and proceeds towards the two hp telomeres. Replication, around the hp telomeres, would produce circular dimer daughter DNAs linked together via replicated telomere (