{"doi":"10.3390/cancers15204986","title":"R-Loops in Genome Instability and Cancer","abstract":"R-loops are unique, three-stranded nucleic acid structures that primarily form when an RNA molecule displaces one DNA strand and anneals to the complementary DNA strand in a double-stranded DNA molecule. R-loop formation can occur during natural processes, such as transcription, in which the nascent RNA molecule remains hybridized with the template DNA strand, while the non-template DNA strand is displaced. However, R-loops can also arise due to many non-natural processes, including DNA damage, dysregulation of RNA degradation pathways, and defects in RNA processing. Despite their prevalence throughout the whole genome, R-loops are predominantly found in actively transcribed gene regions, enabling R-loops to serve seemingly controversial roles. On one hand, the pathological accumulation of R-loops contributes to genome instability, a hallmark of cancer development that plays a role in tumorigenesis, cancer progression, and therapeutic resistance. On the other hand, R-loops play critical roles in regulating essential processes, such as gene expression, chromatin organization, class-switch recombination, mitochondrial DNA replication, and DNA repair. In this review, we summarize discoveries related to the formation, suppression, and removal of R-loops and their influence on genome instability, DNA repair, and oncogenic events. We have also discussed therapeutical opportunities by targeting pathological R-loops.","journal":"Cancers","year":2023,"id":320659,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":48,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9506,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":310299,"name":"Alyan Zafar","orcid":"0009-0000-0199-3049","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1029371,"name":"Liang Luo","orcid":"0009-0009-4403-5604","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1032599,"name":"Ariana Maria Denning","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":744795,"name":"Jun Gu","orcid":"0000-0003-0912-6171","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1032600,"name":"Ansley Bennett","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":310300,"name":"Fenghua Yuan","orcid":"0000-0002-7999-0750","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":241113,"name":"Yanbin Zhang","orcid":"0000-0002-7263-5510","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":310298,"name":"Fang Li","orcid":"0000-0002-7617-6534","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":245,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:07:27.434133Z","pmid":"37894353","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}