Effect of ionizing radiation on the activity of restriction nucleases PvuII and HindIII

The research is focused on the influence of the ionizing radiation on the activity of the restriction enzymes PvuII and HindIII. Enzymes PvuII and HindIII are restriction endonucleases of type II. These enzymes can be found in bacteria and they have a significant role in defense mechanisms of bacteria against viruses. They cleave DNA double helix at specific recognition palindromic sequences in the presence of cofactor Mg²⁺. PvuII cleaves the sequence CAG↓CTG and HindIII cleaves the sequence A↓AGCTT in marked places. Plasmid pcDNA3 has been used as the DNA substrate for the whole experimental study. It is 5446 base pairs (bp) long, circular DNA molecule and it contains three recognition sites for enzyme PvuII and one recognition site for enzyme HindIII. After the correct interaction of pcDNA3 with PvuII, we thus have three plasmid fragments with lengths 1069, 1097 and 3280 bp. When HindIII is incubated with this plasmid, we shall obtain the linear form of the DNA plasmid.The method for processing the cleaved DNA samples is the agarose gel electrophoresis. The activity of the irradiated enzymes decreases with increasing dose of radiation, because a part of the enzymes is deactivated due to induced radiation damage. To determine effect of radiation quality, samples were irradiated using proton and gamma sources. The results of our experimental study are presented and discussed with respect to molecular structure of both enzymes and particular sites of radical damage influencing their function. (authors)