Processing of free radical damaged DNA bases

Free radicals produced during the radiolysis of water gives rise to a plethora of DNA damages including single strand breaks, sites of base loss and a wide variety of purine and pyrimidine base lesions. All these damages are processed in cells by base excision repair. The oxidative DNA glycosylases which catalyze the first step in the removal of a base damage during base excision repair evolved primarily to protect the cells from the deleterious mutagenic effects of single free radical-induced DNA lesions arising during oxidative metabolism. This is evidenced by the high spontaneous mutation rate in bacterial mutants lacking the oxidative DNA glycosylases. However, when a low LET photon transverses the DNA molecule, a burst of free radicals is produced during the radiolysis of water that leads to the formation of clustered damages in the DNA molecule, that are recognized by the oxidative DNA glycosylases. When substrates containing two closely opposed sugar damages or base and sugar damages are incubated with the oxidative DNA glycosylases in vitro, one strand is readily incised by the lyase activity of the DNA glycosylase. Whether or not the second strand is incised depends on the distance between the strand break resulting from the incised first strand and the remaining DNA lesion on the other strand. If the lesions are more than two or three base pairs apart, the second strand is readily cleaved by the DNA glycosylase, giving rise to a double strand break. Even if the entire base excision repair system is reconstituted in vitro, whether or not a double strand break ensues depends solely upon the ability of the DNA glycosylase to cleave the second strand. These data predicted that cells deficient in the oxidative DNA glycosylases would be radioresistant while those that overproduce an oxidative DNA glycosylase would be radiosensitive. This prediction was indeed borne in Escherichia coli that is, mutants lacking the oxidative DNA glycosylases are radioresistant while cells overexpressing one of the oxidative DNA glycosylases are radiosensitive. Human TK6 lymphoblastoid cells overexpressing the oxidative DNA glycosylases are also radiosensitive. Furthermore, both radioresistance and radiosensitivity correlated with the enzymatic production of double strand breaks produced after irradiation during attempted repair. Because these data indicated the potential harmful effects of the ordinarily beneficial presence of the oxidative DNA glycosylases after treatment of cells with ionizing radiation, it was of interest to see if the base excision repair enzymes were induced by ionizing radiation. We found that ionizing radiation does not induce the oxidative DNA glycosylases in either bacterial or in human TK6 lymphoblastoid cells. Interestingly, during this past year, three novel DNA glycosylases that recognize free radical-damaged bases have been identified. The characterization of these activities will also be discussed