Comparison of the activities of bacterial and mammalian nucleotide excision repair systems for DNA-protein crosslinks.

Endogenous and environmental genotoxic agents produce DNA damage and induce cell death and mutations. The repair mechanisms of base lesions and single and double strand breaks have been well characterized in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. However, the molecular pathways that repair or tolerate DNA-protein crosslinks (DPCs) remains to be largely elucidated. In this study, we constructed DNA substrates containing defined DPCs and assessed the incision activities of prokaryotic and eukaryotic nucleotide excision repair systems for DPCs in vitro.