NYMC Faculty Publications
Error-Prone Replication of a 5-Formylcytosine-Mediated DNA-Peptide Cross-Link in Human Cells
DOI
10.1074/jbc.RA119.008879
Journal Title
The Journal of Biological Chemistry
First Page
10619
Last Page
10627
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
July 2019
Department
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Abstract
DNA-protein cross-links can interfere with chromatin architecture, block DNA replication and transcription, and interfere with DNA repair. Here we synthesized a DNA 23-mer containing a site-specific DNA-peptide cross-link (DpC) by cross-linking an 11-mer peptide to the DNA epigenetic mark 5-formylcytosine in synthetic DNA and used it to generate a DpC-containing plasmid construct. Upon replication of the DpC-containing plasmid in HEK 293T cells, approximately 9% of progeny plasmids contained targeted mutations and 5% semitargeted mutations. Targeted mutations included C-->T transitions and C deletions, whereas semitargeted mutations included several base substitutions and deletions near the DpC lesion. To identify DNA polymerases involved in DpC bypass, we comparatively studied translesion synthesis (TLS) efficiency and mutagenesis of the DpC in a series of cell lines with TLS polymerase knockouts or knockdowns. Knockdown of either hPol iota or hPol zeta reduced the mutation frequency by nearly 50%. However, the most significant reduction in mutation frequency (50%-70%) was observed upon simultaneous knockout of hPol eta and hPol kappa with knockdown of hPol zeta, suggesting that these TLS polymerases play a critical role in error-prone DpC bypass. Because TLS efficiency of the DpC construct was not significantly affected in TLS polymerase-deficient cells, we examined a possible role of replicative DNA polymerases in their bypass and determined that hPol delta and hPol can accurately bypass the DpC. We conclude that both replicative and TLS polymerases can bypass this DpC lesion in human cells but that mutations are induced mainly by TLS polymerases.
Recommended Citation
Naldiga, S., Ji, S., Thomforde, J., Nicolae, C., Lee, M., Zhang, Z., Moldovan, G., Tretyakova, N., & Basu, A. (2019). Error-Prone Replication of a 5-Formylcytosine-Mediated DNA-Peptide Cross-Link in Human Cells. The Journal of Biological Chemistry, 294 (27), 10619-10627. https://doi.org/10.1074/jbc.RA119.008879