Photolyase repairs DNA lesions (cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers)
induced by solar-UV using sunlight. It is one of the ingenious inventions
of primitive life. In E. coli, two cofactors, MTHF (methenyltetrahydrofalate)
and FADH (reduced flavin adenine dinucleotide), are bound to the enzyme; the
former collects light and the latter transfers electron to the dimer resulting
in the dimer splitting reaction. The 3D structure of the E. coli enzyme (1DNP)
is shown together with the music of the protein sequence.