An increase of oxidised nucleotides activates DNA damage checkpoint pathway that regulates post-embryonic development in Caenorhabditis elegans.

8-Oxo-dGTP, an oxidised form of dGTP generated in the nucleotide pool, can be incorporated opposite adenine or cytosine in template DNA, which can in turn induce mutations. In this study, we identified a novel MutT homolog (NDX-2) of Caenorhabditis elegans that hydrolyzes 8-oxo-dGDP to 8-oxo-dGMP. In addition, we found that NDX-1, NDX-2 and NDX-4 proteins have 8-oxo-GTPase or 8-oxo-GDPase activity. The sensitivity of ndx-2 knockdown C. elegans worms to methyl viologen and menadione bisulphite was increased compared with that of control worms. This sensitivity was rescued by depletion of chk-2 and clk-2, suggesting that growth of the worms is regulated by the checkpoint pathway in response to the accumulation of oxidised nucleotides. Moreover, we found that the sensitivity to menadione bisulphite of ndx-1 and ndx-2-double knockdown worms was enhanced by elimination of XPA-1, a factor involved in nucleotide excision repair. The rescue effect by depletion of chk-2 and clk-2 was limited in the xpa-1 mutant, suggesting that the chk-2 and clk-2 checkpoint pathway is partially linked to the function of XPA-1.