Abstract
Alkylative damage to DNA can be induced by environmental chemicals, endogenous metabolites and some commonly prescribed chemotherapeutic agents. The regioisomeric N3-, O2- and O4-ethylthymidine (N3-, O2- and O4-EtdT, respectively) represent an important class of ethylated DNA lesions. Using nonreplicative double-stranded vectors containing an N3-EtdT, O2-EtdT or O4-EtdT at a defined site in the template strand, herein we examined the effects of these lesions on DNA transcription mediated by single-subunit T7 RNA polymerase or multisubunit human RNA polymerase II in vitro and in human cells. We found that O4-EtdT is highly mutagenic and exclusively induces the misincorporation of guanine opposite the lesion, whereas N3-EtdT and O2-EtdT display promiscuous miscoding properties during transcription. In addition, N3-EtdT and O2-EtdT were found to inhibit strongly DNA transcription in vitro and in certain human cells. Moreover, N3-EtdT, but not O2-EtdT or O4-EtdT, is an efficient substrate for transcription-coupled nucleotide excision repair. These findings provide new important insights into how these alkylated DNA lesions compromise the flow of genetic information, which may help to understand the risk of these lesions in living cells.
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