Kenneth J. Marians

Contributed in three areas: the organization and function of the replication fork, the regulation of DNA topology, and the mechanisms that deal with perturbations of DNA replication. He described crucial protein-protein interactions that ensure rapid and faithful DNA synthesis. He characterized the mechanisms that allow collapsed replication forks to restart DNA synthesis, and he discovered that the replisome has the inherent capacity to reinitiate DNA synthesis downstream of lesions. This work has contributed in a fundamental way to understanding how genomes are duplicated and how cells survive DNA damage.