Quantitation of carcinogen-induced DNA damage and repair in human cells with the UVR ABC excision nuclease from Escherichia coli.

Recent studies by others have shown that the endonuclease complex coded for by the uvrA, uvrB and uvrC genes of Escherichia coli (UVR ABC excision nuclease) can incise DNA containing a variety of 'bulk-type' lesions, such as those resulting from u.v. light, (+/-)-7 alpha,8 beta-dihydroxy-9 alpha,10 alpha-epoxy-7,8,9,10-tetrahydrobenzo[a]pyrene (anti-BPDE), and N-acetoxy-2-acetylaminofluorene. Using partially purified UVR ABC excision nuclease, we have quantitated the number of endonuclease sensitive sites (ESS) in purified DNA isolated from human fibroblasts treated with u.v. light or BPDE. The number of ESS/10(8) daltons of DNA were calculated from the number average mol. wt. of the DNA as determined by sedimentation in alkaline sucrose gradients. The number of endonuclease sites increased linearly with increasing doses of either u.v. light or BPDE. The UVR ABC excision nuclease was able to incise a majority of the BPDE-DNA adducts. Xeroderma pigmentosum fibroblasts, complementation group A (XP12BE) had 20-25% more ESS at each dose than the BPDE-treated normal (HSBP) cells. Cells treated with 4 microM BPDE and allowed 12 h of incubation to perform excision repair showed removal of 60% of the initial number of ESS from HSBP DNA and 40% of the ESS from XP-A DNA. Beyond 12 h XP12BE cells lost no additional ESS while HSBP cells continued to lose ESS, although at a slower rate, until at 48 h only 22% of the initial ESS remained. In cells treated with 10 J/m2 of u.v. light, the UVR ABC excision nuclease detected 60% of the sites recognized by the pyridimine dimer specific Micrococcus luteus glycosylase/apyrimidinic endonuclease. These results demonstrate the potential use of the UVR ABC excision nuclease in a quantitative assay for determining the number of carcinogen-induced lesions in human DNA.