Double-strand break repair protein MRE11 (MRE11)

Component of the MRN complex, which plays a central role in double-strand break (DSB) repair, DNA recombination, maintenance of telomere integrity and meiosis. The complex possesses single-strand endonuclease activity and double-strand- specific 3'-5' exonuclease activity, which are provided by MRE11.

RAD50 could be asked to bind DNA ends and hold them in close proximity. This may facilitate searches for long or short regions of sequence homology in the recombining DNA templates, and may also stimulate the activity of DNA ligases and/or restrict the nuclease activity of MRE11 to stop nucleolytic degradation beyond a given point (PubMed:9651580, PubMed:9590181, PubMed:9705271, PubMed:11741547, PubMed:29670289).