Definition:

DNA polymerase that promotes microhomology-mediated end-joining (MMEJ), an alternative non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) machinery triggered in response to double-strand breaks in DNA. MMEJ is an error-prone repair pathway that produces deletions of sequences from the strand being repaired and promotes genomic rearrangements, such as telomere fusions, some of them leading to cellular transformation. POLQ acts as an inhibitor of homology-recombination repair (HR) pathway by limiting RAD51 accumulation at resected ends. POLQ-mediated MMEJ may be required to promote the survival of cells with a compromised HR repair pathway, thereby preventing genomic havoc by resolving unrepaired lesions (By similarity). The polymerase acts by binding directly the 2 ends of resected double-strand breaks, allowing microhomologous sequences in the overhangs to form base pairs. It then extends each strand from the base-paired region using the opposing overhang as a template. Requires partially resected DNA containing 2 to 6 base pairs of microhomology to perform MMEJ. The polymerase activity is highly promiscuous: unlike most polymerases, promotes extension of ssDNA and partial ssDNA (pssDNA) substrates. Also exhibits low-fidelity DNA synthesis, translesion synthesis and lyase activity, and it is implicated in interstrand-cross-link repair, base excision repair and DNA end-joining. Involved in somatic hypermutation of immunoglobulin genes, a process that requires the activity of DNA polymerases to ultimately introduce mutations at both A/T and C/G base pairs (By similarity).