Abstract

Endo‐exonucleases from E. coli to man, although very different proteins, are multifunctional enzymes with similar enzymatic activities. They probably have two common but opposing biological roles. On the one hand, they promote survival of the organism by acting in recombination and recombinational DNA repair to diversify and help preserve the genome intact. On the other hand, they degrade the genomic DNA when it is damaged beyond repair. This ensures elimination of heavily mutagenized cells from the population.