DNA damage and repair Flashcards
How many damage sites does each cell acquire in its DNA per day?
10,000-100,000
How may a cell reply to DNA damage?
Cell cycle arrest leading to replicative senescence.
Cell death.
What arises from a mutation in a somatic cell?
Either cell death or cancer.
What arises from a mutation in a germline cell?
Either genetic disorder or selective advantage.
What happens when DNA damage isn’t repaired?
Replication/transcription are blocked.
What happens during inaccurate repair?
The DNA is no longer damaged, but the base sequence isn’t what is was before, the damage has been fixed, the repair is complete but an error has been made = mutation.
What are the 2 main consequences of DNA damage?
Mutation
Aging
What is a mutation?
Any permanent heritable alteration in the nucleotide sequence of a DNA molecules that is passed to the progeny cells.
How may mutations arise?
Errors in replication of normal DNA - DNA polymerases have high fidelity and extraordinary accuracy but they aren’t totally perfect.
Inaccurate repair of damaged DNA.
Replication of damaged DNA.
What is the mutation rate in the human germline?
0.3 mutations per 10,000000000 bp per cell division.
How many brand new mutations does a typical new born have?
60
Are more mutations in a child acquired from mother or father?
Father - 80% of new mutations present in child are acquired from the father.
Why is the number of new mutations in a child related to the age of a father?
This is related to the number of cell divisions needed to make male gametes compared to female gametes.
How do mutations cause aging?
Mutations accumulate as we age, unrepaired damage is toxic and may lead to cell death or cell senescence causing loss of functional cells (inc. stem cells) and consequent biological aging.
What is the evidence for the role of DNA damage in aging?
Mutations and DNA dmaage accumulate with age.
Defects in DNA repair pathways often underlie premature aging syndromes.
Cancer sufferers cured by chemotherapy with drugs that damage DNA show signs of premature aging and increased risk (3-6-fold) of a second cancer.
What is the incidence of frailty in young cancer survivors?
10%
Name two drugs that damage DNA?
Cyclophosphamide
Cisplatin
What are the way in which spontaneous damage can arise?
- Errors in DNA replication e.g. incorporation of incorrect nucleotides.
- Deamination of cytosine.
- Depurination.
- Damage due to reactive oxygen species arising from oxidative metabolism.
What family of enzymes protect the mitochondria from oxidative damage?
Dismutases.
Are errors in replication a result of DNA damage?
No, they are the result of an error by DNA polymerase enzyme.
How can errors in replication lead to mutation?
If the error occurs in the top strand, the bottom strand is fine and can be used as a template but when the top strand is used as a template in the next round of replication, the mismatch is used as a template leading to permanent mutation.
What are the 2 unavoidable types of spontaneous DNA damage?
Deamination
Depuration
What is deamination?
Deamination of cytosine is a hydrolytic reaction in which the amino group is lost from a cytosine converting the cytosine to uracil which shouldn’t be in DNA at all.
Unless repaired before replication, deamination may lead to replacement of CG pairs with TA pairs.
Deamination of cytosine generates a UG base pair, usually the U will be repaired and replaced with C again.
If not repaired, the U is read as a T so a new piece of DNA is made with a UA pair.
If that is used as a template for replication, we get a TA pair as the A is paired with a A.
How many cytosine deaminations occur per cell per day?
100-200 cytosine deamination.
What is depurination?
Depurination is the loss of glycosidic bone between deoxyribose and either adenine or guanine.
The glycosidic bond holding adenine/guanine onto a deoxyribose is broken generating a piece of DNA chain where there is simply a base missing = apurinic site.
This is simply a spontaneous hydrolytic reaction there is no avoiding it.
How many depurinationns occur per cell per day?
10,000
What are the consequences of depurination?
There are 2 mechanisms through which depurination can give rise to mutation.
Translesion DNA polymerases are a last resort set of polymerases that can read through a damaged site and introduce a random (possibly incorrect) base at the untemplated region to repair the site.
The second way is simply to miss out the untemplated region introducing a kink into the DNA, a nucleotide has been missed out therefore this generates a small deletion.
How do reactive oxygen species arise?
Through oxidative metabolism.
What are reactive oxygen species?
They contain an oxygen with an unpaired electron making them hugely reactive and damaging.
What is the consequence of reactive oxygen species?
They cause >70 different types of DNA damage, one of the most common types is oxidation of guanine.
- Formation of 8 oxo-guanine, this can still pair with cytosine but can also pair with adenine, therefore it is sometimes read as a T leading to GC bps being converted to AT.
- Strand breaks - single strand breaks much more common than double-strand breaks.
- Interstrand crosslinks - complementary strands become joined by covalent bonds preventing DNA polymerase/transcription machinery from being able to unwind DNA.
- Formation of cyclopurines - a purine becomes covalently bound to carbon 5 of deoxyribose, this blocks trasncription and replication.
How many molecules of 8 oxo-guanine form per cell per day?
2000-3000.
How many single strand breaks occur per cell per day?
> 10,000
How many double-strand breaks occur per cell per day?
10
How many interstrand cross-links form per cell per da?
10
How many cyclopurines form per cell per day?
Several hundred.
What are cyclopurines?
They occur when a purine becomes covalently bound to carbon 5 of deoxyribose.
What is a interstrand crosslink?
Joining of complementary strands by covalent bonding, a distastrous lesion that prevents unwinding of DNA by DNA replication/polymerase/transcriptional machinery.
What are the 3 most common mutagens we are exposed to?
- Ionising radiation e.g. X-rays/gamma rays
- Various chemicals e.g. polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
- Ultraviolet radiation
Can you get inherited mutations generated by UV?
No - UV only affects skin cells because it only affects cells directly exposed to UV light.
How does ionising radiation damage DNA?
It can damage DNA directly by ionising bases/damaging the sugar phosphate backbone or indirectly by reacting with water and generating reactive oxygen species e.g. hydroxyl radicals.
What kind of damaged ends do clusters of reactive oxygen species generate?
Dirty ends - difficult to repair due to lacking 3’OH or lacking 5’ phosphate etc or base oxidation.
Give some examples of ionising radiation?
Particle radiation, for example from radioactive substances in the lab giving off beta-radiation.
Short-wavelength electromagnetic radiation, e.g. gamma rays, X-rays etc.
How many ionising particles pass through us each hour?
300 million.
How many cancer cases per year are thought to be the result of medical X-rays?
700
How do polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons damage DNA?
They react directly with bases and commonly become covalently bonded to guanine, this alters base-pairing properties and alters the structure of DNA hence blocking transcription/replication.
What is the most common polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon?
Benzylpyrene.
What are the 3 ways that UV induces DNA damage?
- The formation of cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers.
- The formation of 6-4 photoproducts between pyrimidine (about 25% the frequency of CPDs).
- Formation of reactive oxygen species.
Are CPDs or 6-4 photoproducts more commonly induced?
CPDs, 6-4 photoproducts form at 25% the frequency of cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers.
What is a cyclobutane pyrimidine dimer and how do they cause damage?
2 covalent bonds between Cs and Ts resulting in the formation of a 4-membered ring between 2 adjacent pyrimidine residues.
These two covalent bonds distort the DNA molecules and disrupt the hydrogen bonding and base-pairing.
What is a 6-4 photoproduct and how do they cause damage?
A single covalent bond between the 6th atom of 1 pyrimidine ring and the 4th atom of the pyrimidine ring next door.
This distorts the DNA strcture and alters teh hydrogen bonding/base-pairing of a DNA molecule.