True XP group E patients have a defective UV-damaged DNA binding protein complex and mutations in DDB2 which reveal the functional domains of its p48 product.

Xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) is a skin cancer-prone autosomal recessive disease characterized by inability to repair UV-induced DNA damage. The major form of XP is defective in nucleotide excision repair (NER) and comprises seven complementation groups (A-G). The genes defective in all groups have been identified unambiguously with the exception of group E. The cells of some XP-E patients are deficient in a protein complex (consisting of two subunits: p127/DDBI and p48/DDB2) which binds to UV-damaged DNA (UV-DDB) and is specifically involved in the removal of photoproducts from the non-transcribed regions of the genome. However, other XP-E patients have been reported not to lack UV-damaged DNA binding activity (DDB(+)). Here we describe several genetically unrelated XP-E patients, not previously analyzed in depth, each carrying two mutated alleles for DDB2, causing either a single amino acid change or a protein truncation or internal deletion. These defects result in a severe decrease of detectable p48 protein, abolish interaction with the p127 subunit, and produce a deficiency in UV-DDB binding activity (DDB(-)). The role of p48 in the repair defect of these patients was demonstrated in vivo and in vitro. Investigation of four DDB(+) cell strains from patients previously assigned to XP-E, allowed us to reclassify all of them into other groups and to show that they do not share the molecular and biochemical features typical for XP-E. Besides confirming that the true XP-E phenotype is DDB(-), resulting from defects in a single gene, DDB2, our results identify the functional domains of the corresponding p48 protein.