Instability of fluorenylamine-substituted polynucleotides: Loss of carcinogen and production of an altered nucleic acid

Abstract

Reaction of N-hydroxy-2-aminofluorene (N-OH-AF) with rRNA at pH 5.0 decreased the molecular weight of the polynucleotide. Toluene-soluble aryl derivatives were released on hydrolysis of fluorenylamine- and biphenylamine-substituted RNA by treatment with venom phosphodiesterase and alkaline phosphatase.These data suggested that arylhydroxylamines, activated by incubation at pH 5.0 or by enzymatic O-acetylation, might react with the phosphate group of RNA to give unstable phosphate triesters. Spontaneous hydrolysis of these triesters would result in cleavage of the polynucleotide chain. Further enzymatic hydrolysis of the phosphate esters would yield nonpolar arylamine derivatives.Enzymatically degraded 4-aminobiphenyl(ABP)-RNA adducts were examined by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) for the presence of a putative phosphorylated adduct. Synthetic standards of the C-8-guanosine monophosphate-ABP adduct (ABP-GMP) and o-aminobiphenyl-O-phosphate were used as markers in the analysis of the digested RNA. A phosphate adduct of ABP was undetectable by these methods. The data also indicated that the ABP-GMP formed in the acyltransferase-mediated binding of N-hydroxy-4-acetylaminobiphenyl (N-OH-AABP) to RNA is readily degraded during the enzymatic digestion of the RNA adduct.