The ability of cells to survive in an environment specifically damaging to its DNA can be attributed to a variety of inherent repair mechanisms. This is a form of repair in which alterations are directly reversed to their original form. This reversibility is exemplified by the photoreactivation of ultraviolet-induced pyrimidine dimers. This phenomenon is attributable to the action of an enzyme, photolyase (photoreactivating enzyme), which is able to monomerize the uv-induced pyrimidine dimers in the presence of 320 to 370 nm light. Dilution of damage can be effected through a series of sister chromatid exchanges, controlled by recombinational mechanisms as a postreplication event. In this form of repair, replication proceeds to the point of damage, stops and resumes at the point of the next initiation site resulting in a gap in the newly synthesized daughter strand. It is presumed that those strands containing damaged regions exchange with undamaged regions of other DNA, strands, resulting in the eventual dilution of such damage.