{"doi":"10.7554/elife.61920","title":"XLF acts as a flexible connector during non-homologous end joining","abstract":"Non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) is the predominant pathway that repairs DNA double-strand breaks in vertebrates. During NHEJ DNA ends are held together by a multi-protein synaptic complex until they are ligated. Here, we use Xenopus laevis egg extract to investigate the role of the intrinsically disordered C-terminal tail of the XRCC4-like factor (XLF), a critical factor in end synapsis. We demonstrate that the XLF tail along with the Ku-binding motif (KBM) at the extreme C-terminus are required for end joining. Although the underlying sequence of the tail can be varied, a minimal tail length is required for NHEJ. Single-molecule FRET experiments that observe end synapsis in real-time show that this defect is due to a failure to closely align DNA ends. Our data supports a model in which a single C-terminal tail tethers XLF to Ku, while allowing XLF to form interactions with XRCC4 that enable synaptic complex formation.","journal":"eLife","year":2020,"id":94533,"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":38,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9545,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":472212,"name":"Andrew Moreno","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":471097,"name":"Sadie C. Piatt","orcid":"0000-0002-3296-3990","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":471098,"name":"Metztli Cisneros‐Aguirre","orcid":"0000-0002-3260-113X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":392740,"name":"Felicia Wednesday Lopezcolorado","orcid":"0000-0002-2916-6042","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":392741,"name":"Jeremy M. Stark","orcid":"0000-0002-2625-5373","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":471099,"name":"Joseph J. Loparo","orcid":"0000-0003-4941-4696","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":471096,"name":"Sean M. Carney","orcid":"0000-0002-2674-1064","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":45,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T22:33:00.770265Z","pmid":"33289484","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":[]}