Breaks in DNA happen all the time, whether due to radiation or the error-prone process of duplicating DNA for cell division. If those breaks are repaired incorrectly, a cell can become cancerous. Now, using a plate of glass and a tiny magnetic bead, scientists in Holland have watched a repair process called homologous recombination. Cees Dekker of the Delft University of Technology and his colleagues suspended individual strands of DNA between the glass and the bead. Also present was an enzyme that broke the DNA, along with another enzyme, RecA (shown here as transparent blobs). The researchers “watched” the DNA repair process by tracking movements of the magnetic bead as the DNA tugged on it during the repair. "We want to see it while it happens, which is why we do a single-molecule approach," says Susanne Hage, a research team member at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam. The researchers showed that RecA is a necessary part of the repair machinery, the team reports in the May 23 Molecular Cell. ---Patrick Barry

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