Mutagenicity of active oxygen species in bacteria and its enzymatic or chemical inhibition.

The mono-electronic reduction of oxygen in the hypoxanthine-xanthine oxidase system led to the formation of active species eliciting an evident and highly reproducible mutagenic response in strain TA104 of S. typhimurium. Similar effects were observed by generating oxy radicals either extracellularly or inside bacterial cells. Mutagenicity was selectively detected in TA104 and not in other Salmonella strains, which points out the importance of the hisG428 mutation and of the deletion excising the uvrB gene, as far as sensitivity to oxy radicals is concerned. The mutagenicity of the system was further enhanced in the presence of superoxide dismutase. Catalase did not affect the mutagenicity of hypoxanthine plus xanthine oxidase, whereas it inhibited the mutagenicity induced by the mixture of hypoxanthine with xanthine oxidase and superoxide dismutase. This demonstrates that not only hydrogen peroxide but also the superoxide radical anion is positive in this system. Glutathione and 2 synthetic thiols, i.e., N-acetylcysteine and alpha-mercaptopropionylglycine, besides decreasing the high spontaneous mutagenicity of TA104, efficiently prevented the mutagenicity of active oxygen species.