Ntg2 of Saccharomyces cerevisiae repairs the oxidation products of 8-hydroxyguanine

The current state of eukaryotic DNA base damage and repair

DNA damage is a natural hazard of life. The most common DNA lesions are base, sugar, and single-strand break damage resulting from oxidation, alkylation, deamination, and spontaneous hydrolysis. If left unrepaired, such lesions can become fixed in the genome as permanent mutations. Thus, evolution has led to the creation of several highly conserved, partially redundant pathways to repair or mitigate the effects of DNA base damage. The biochemical mechanisms of these pathways have been well characterized and the impact of this work was recently highlighted by the selection of Tomas Lindahl, Aziz Sancar and Paul Modrich as the recipients of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their seminal work in defining DNA repair pathways. However, how these repair pathways are regulated and interconnected is still being elucidated. This review focuses on the classical base excision repair and strand incision pathways in eukaryotes, considering both Saccharomyces cerevisiae and humans, and extends to some important questions and challenges facing the field of DNA base damage repair.

DNA damage by singlet oxygen and cellular protective mechanisms

Reactive oxygen species, as singlet oxygen ((1)O(2)) and hydrogen peroxide, are continuously generated by aerobic organisms, and react actively with biomolecules. At excessive amounts, (1)O(2) induces oxidative stress and shows carcinogenic and toxic effects due to oxidation of lipids, proteins and nucleic acids. Singlet oxygen is able to react with DNA molecule and may induce G to T transversions due to 8-oxodG generation. The nucleotide excision repair, base excision repair and mismatch repair have been implicated in the correction of DNA lesions induced by (1)O(2) both in prokaryotic and in eukaryotic cells. (1)O(2) is also able to induce the expression of genes involved with the cellular responses to oxidative stress, such as NF-κB, c-fos and c-jun, and genes involved with tissue damage and inflammation, as ICAM-1, interleukins 1 and 6. The studies outlined in this review reinforce the idea that (1)O(2) is one of the more dangerous reactive oxygen species to the cells, and deserves our attention.

8-Oxoguanine induces intramolecular DNA damage but free 8-oxoguanine protects intermolecular DNA from oxidative stress

7,8-Dihydro-8-oxoguanine (8-oxoguanine; 8-oxo-G), one of the major oxidative DNA adducts, is highly susceptible to further oxidation by radicals. We confirmed the higher reactivity of 8-oxo-G toward reactive oxygen (singlet oxygen and hydroxyl radical) or nitrogen (peroxynitrite) species as compared to unmodified base. In this study, we raised the question about the effect of this high reactivity toward radicals on intramolecular and intermolecular DNA damage. We found that the amount of intact nucleoside in oligodeoxynucleotide containing 8-oxo-G decreased more by various radicals at higher levels of 8-oxo-G incorporation, and that the oligodeoxynucleotide damage and plasmid cleavage by hydroxyl radical were inhibited in the presence of 7,8-dihydro-8-oxo-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-oxo-dG). We conclude that 8-oxo-G within DNA induces intramolecular DNA base damage, but that free 8-oxo-G protects intermolecular DNA from oxidative stress. These results suggest that 8-oxo-G within DNA must be rapidly released to protect DNA from overall oxidative damage.

Enzymology of the repair of free radicals-induced DNA damage

A number of intrinsic and extrinsic mutagens induce structural damage in cellular DNA. These DNA damages are cytotoxic, miscoding or both and are believed to be at the origin of cell lethality, tissue degeneration, ageing and cancer. In order to counteract immediately the deleterious effects of such lesions, leading to genomic instability, cells have evolved a number of DNA repair mechanisms including the direct reversal of the lesion, sanitation of the dNTPs pools, mismatch repair and several DNA excision pathways including the base excision repair (BER) nucleotide excision repair (NER) and the nucleotide incision repair (NIR). These repair pathways are universally present in living cells and extremely well conserved. This review is focused on the repair of lesions induced by free radicals and ionising radiation. The BER pathway removes most of these DNA lesions, although recently it was shown that other pathways would also be efficient in the removal of oxidised bases. In the BER pathway the process is initiated by a DNA glycosylase excising the modified and mismatched base by hydrolysis of the glycosidic bond between the base and the deoxyribose of the DNA, generating a free base and an abasic site (AP-site) which in turn is repaired since it is cytotoxic and mutagenic.