Characterization of enzymes that initiate base excision repair at abasic sites.
Abasic sites in DNA arise under a variety of circumstances, including destabilization of bases through oxidative stress, as an intermediate in base excision repair, and through spontaneous loss. Their persistence can yield a blockade to RNA transcription and DNA synthesis and can be a source of mutations. Organisms have developed an enzymatic means of repairing abasic sites in DNA that generally involves a DNA repair pathway that is initiated by a repair protein creating a phosphodiester break ("nick") adjacent to the site of base loss. Here we describe a method for analyzing the manner in which repair endonucleases differ in the way they create nicks in DNA and how to distinguish between them using cellular crude extracts.
Deutsch
Walter A
WA
Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA.
Hegde
Vijay
V