DNA cruciforms play an important role in the regulation of natural processes involving DNA. These structures are formed by inverted repeats, and their stability is enhanced by DNA supercoiling. Cruciform structures are fundamentally important for a wide range of biological processes, including replication, regulation of gene expression, nucleosome structure and recombination. They also have been implicated in the evolution and development of diseases including cancer, Werner's syndrome and others.Cruciform structures are targets for many architectural and regulatory proteins, such as histones H1 and H5, topoisomerase IIβ, HMG proteins, HU, p53, the proto-oncogene protein DEK and others. A number of DNA-binding proteins, such as the HMGB-box family members, Rad54, BRCA1 protein, as well as PARP-1 polymerase, possess weak sequence specific DNA binding yet bind preferentially to cruciform structures. Some of these proteins are, in fact, capable of inducing the formation of cruciform structures upon DNA binding. In this article, we review the protein families that are involved in interacting with and regulating cruciform structures, including (a) the junction-resolving enzymes, (b) DNA repair proteins and transcription factors, (c) proteins involved in replication and (d) chromatin-associated proteins. The prevalence of cruciform structures and their roles in protein interactions, epigenetic regulation and the maintenance of cell homeostasis are also discussed.

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Polymorphic potential of SRF binding site of c-Fos gene promoter: in vitro study

Special Issue "Bioinformatics of Unusual DNA and RNA Structures"

Non-canonical DNA structures in the human ribosomal DNA

Variability of Inverted Repeats in All Available Genomes of Bacteria

Interaction of Proteins with Inverted Repeats and Cruciform Structures in Nucleic Acids

G-quadruplexes in helminth parasites

Searching for New Z-DNA/Z-RNA Binding Proteins Based on Structural Similarity to Experimentally Validated Zα Domain

R-Loop Tracker: Web Access-Based Tool for R-Loop Detection and Analysis in Genomic DNA Sequences

SARS-CoV-2 hot-spot mutations are significantly enriched within inverted repeats and CpG island loci

G-quadruplexes in H1N1 influenza genomes

Amino Acid Composition in Various Types of Nucleic Acid-Binding Proteins

In-Depth Bioinformatic Analyses of Nidovirales Including Human SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV Viruses Suggest Important Roles of Non-canonical Nucleic Acid Structures in Their Lifecycles

Structures and stability of simple DNA repeats from bacteria

The Influence of Quadruplex Structure in Proximity to P53 Target Sequences on the Transactivation Potential of P53 Alpha Isoforms

The Rich World of p53 DNA Binding Targets: The Role of DNA Structure

G4Hunter web application: a web server for G-quadruplex prediction

The Presence and Localization of G-Quadruplex Forming Sequences in the Domain of Bacteria

The Amino Acid Composition of Quadruplex Binding Proteins Reveals a Shared Motif and Predicts New Potential Quadruplex Interactors

Complex Analyses of Short Inverted Repeats in All Sequenced Chloroplast DNAs

p73, like its p53 homolog, shows preference for inverted repeats forming cruciforms