Ultraviolet B light-induced mutagenesis of p53 hotspot codons 248 and 249 in human skin fibroblasts.

Mutations in the p53 tumor suppressor gene are detected in approximately half of non-melanoma skin cancers. The type of base-pair changes observed strongly suggests solar radiation as the causative mutagen. Mutations are distributed nonrandomly and form moderate hotspots. We studied the capacity of ultraviolet B light (UVB, 280-320 nm) to induce base-pair changes into the p53 exon 7 sequence extending from nt 14067 to 14075 in human skin fibroblasts. This sequence contains hotspot codon 248. UVB induced mostly C-->A and G-->T transversions. The base-pair change with the highest relative abundance was C-->A in the first position of codon 250 (CCC-->ACC), followed by (in diminishing relative abundance) G-->T in the third position of codon 249 (AGG-->AGT), C-->A in the first position of codon 248 (CGG-->AGG), and C-->A in the third position of codon 247 (AAC-->AAA). The C-->T transition in the third position of codon 247 (AAC-->AAT) occurred with moderate efficiency. These base-pair changes are compatible with pyrimidine photodimers as premutagenic lesions, but they could also form opposite 8-hydroxyguanine, which is the major oxidation product of guanine. No evidence was obtained for the presence of tandem double CC-->TT transitions in the untranscribed strand at codons 247/248 and 250. The relative abundance of mutations induced by UVB in the p53 sequence extending from codon 247 to 250 in human fibroblasts does not correlate with mutations observed in the DNA from non-melanoma skin cancer. This lack of correlation suggests that the mutability of this p53 sequence at the DNA level plays only a minor role in the pathogenesis of non-melanoma skin cancer in humans.