Light-induced DNA cleavage by esperamicin and neocarzinostatin.

Ultraviolet radiation of the enediyne drugs is effective in causing nicks in supercoiled DNA. Of special interest is the fact that the observed nucleotide cleaving specificity for the UV light- and thiol-activated antibiotics was the same with esperamicin A1, but was different with neocarzinostatin. In addition to the preferred cutting of T and A bases, the light-activated neocarzinostatin attacked certain G bases which were rarely cleaved by the thiol-activated neocarzinostatin. It should be noted that these enediyne antibiotics lose the DNA breakage activity after light-exposure for 30 min.