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Journal of Bacteriology, April 2000, p. 2104-2112, Vol. 182, No. 8
Department of Cancer Cell Biology, Harvard
School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts 02115
Received 4 August 1999/Accepted 18 January 2000
DNA damage is unavoidable, and organisms across the evolutionary
spectrum possess DNA repair pathways that are critical for cell
viability and genomic stability. To understand the role of base
excision repair (BER) in protecting eukaryotic cells against alkylating
agents, we generated Schizosaccharomyces pombe strains mutant for the mag1 3-methyladenine DNA glycosylase gene.
We report that S. pombe mag1 mutants have only a slightly
increased sensitivity to methylation damage, suggesting that
Mag1-initiated BER plays a surprisingly minor role in alkylation
resistance in this organism. We go on to show that other DNA repair
pathways play a larger role than BER in alkylation resistance.
Mutations in genes involved in nucleotide excision repair
(rad13) and recombinational repair (rhp51) are much more alkylation sensitive than
mag1 mutants. In addition, S. pombe mutant for
the flap endonuclease rad2 gene, whose precise function in
DNA repair is unclear, were also more alkylation sensitive than
mag1 mutants. Further, mag1 and
rad13 interact synergistically for alkylation resistance,
and mag1 and rhp51 display a surprisingly
complex genetic interaction. A model for the role of BER in the
generation of alkylation-induced DNA strand breaks in S. pombe is discussed.
0021-9193/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Contribution of Base Excision Repair, Nucleotide Excision Repair,
and DNA Recombination to Alkylation Resistance of the Fission
Yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe
and
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Cancer Cell Biology, Harvard School of Public Health, 665 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA 02115. Phone: (617) 432-1085. Fax: (617)
432-0400. E-mail: lsamson{at}sph.harvard.edu.
Present address: Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of
Public Health, Boston, MA 02115.
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