Replication stress (RS) is a primary driver of genomic instability in cancer, yet the contribution of transcription-coupled repair (TC-NER) to this process remains unclear. Here, we investigate how the TC-NER factor ERCC6 (CSB) shapes mutational landscapes under RS. We found that ERCC6 deficiency biases early damage signaling toward a 53BP1-mediated response, ultimately leading to senescence. Conversely, ERCC6-proficient cells prioritize survival and proliferative recovery but at the expense of distinct genomic alterations. Whole-exome sequencing reveals that ERCC6 proficiency is associated with the retention of stress-induced mutations specifically within coding regions of transcriptionally active loci, whereas ERCC6-deficient cells accumulate variants primarily in intergenic regions. These findings suggest that while ERCC6 safeguards transcriptional continuity during RS, its activity is associated with a biased retention of stress-induced mutations within coding regions in the surviving cell population. These findings reveal a previously unrecognized link between transcription-coupled repair and mutation distribution in human cells, linking TC-NER to context-dependent somatic evolution and tumor heterogeneity.
Zambrano et al. (2026) studied this question.