Mechanism interactions and function of the structure specific nuclease XPF

古细菌是一组微生物，通常在火山池和盐田等极端环境中发现。随着DNA测序技术的出现，人们认识到古细菌与使我们生病的细菌关系并不密切，而更像真核生物（有核的生物），如酵母、蠕虫和人类。这种关系反映在古细菌和真核生物在复制遗传物质和传递信息（信息处理途径）的机制上的相似性上。由于这个原因，古生菌被作为一个有用的模型系统来研究，但它们本身也很重要和有趣，因为它们在生物世界中占很大比例。关于古细菌的信息处理，我们还有很多不了解的地方。在过去的7年里，我们研究了古细菌的这些途径，发现并鉴定了许多新的蛋白质。我们一直在研究古细菌核酸酶XPF（一种切割DNA链的蛋白质），它与人类修复DNA损伤的重要蛋白质相似。我们知道蛋白质的结构，我们希望对其结构、功能、机制和相互作用进行研究。

The archaea are a group of microbes, often found in extreme environments such as volcanic pools and salt pans. With the advent of DNA sequencing, it was recognised that the archaea are not closely related to bacteria such as the ones that make us sick, but rather are more similar to the eukarya (organisms with a nucleus), such as yeast, worms and humans. This relationship is reflected in similarities between the archaea and eukarya in the machinery that makes copies of the genetic material and transfers information (the information processing pathways). For this reason archaea have been studied as a useful model system, but they are also important and interesting in their own right, as they make up a big proportion of the living world. There is still a lot we don't know about information processing in the archaea. We have studied these pathways in archaea for the last 7 years and have discovered and characterised a lot of new proteins. We have been studying the archaeal nuclease XPF (a protein that cuts DNA strands) that is similar to a human protein important for repair of DNA damage. We know the structure of the protein and we wish to carry out studies of its structure, function, mechanism and interactions.