DNA Repair Flashcards
What is DNA Damage?
DNA is damaged thousands of times per cell per day
- due to many factors
- including basic chemistry of the nucleic acids
- external things like UV light, chemicals, radiation, pH, smoking, etc.
Allowing such cells to replicate is “bad”
State the short term consequences of DNA damage?
- Reduced proliferation
- Altered gene expression
- Cell death (apoptosis)
What are the long term consequences of DNA damage?
- aging
- diseases especially cancer
Is p53 a caretaker or gatekeeper?
p53 is the cellular gatekeeper for growth and division.
What is the importance of DNA repair?
DNA damage is common
Normal metabolism causes about 10^4 DNA adducts/cell/day through generation of endogenous oxidants (e.g. hydrogen peroxide, suoeroxxude etc.)
It can be recognized and efficiently repaired BUT,
Trying to replicate through it can convert DNA damage into mutations
Important to distinguish between DNA damage and DNA mutation
What is the molecular basis of mutation?
Mutations can be spontaneous or induced
Induced mutations are in addition to the rate of spontaneous mutation
There are two classes 9f spontaneous mutation- errrors of replication & spontaneous lesions
Differentiate the two types of spontaneous mutations?
- Errors of replication= mistakes made during replication
- only occurs during S phase of cell division - Spontaneous lesions- chemical changes that occur spontaneously
- Occurs in resting cell
Explain errors of replication. What is tautomerism?
Errors of replication- wring base is incorporated by DNA polymerase
-due to chemistry of the nucleotides
Tautomerism= the ability of certain chemicals to exist as a mixture of two interconvertable isomers
Thymine usually pairs A, the rare enolase form now pairs with G
Explain proofreading
Replication is very accurate but errors occur
DNA polymerase error rate= 1/100,000 bases
Actual error rate = 1 in 10,000,000
DNA Pol. enzyme has 5’ to 3’ polymerase activity AND 3’ to 5’ exonuclease activity
Also there are other repair systems that can detect and repair errors
What causes bloom syndrome?
Defect in a gene encoding a DNA helicase enzyme
-Required for replication repair, recombination
What are the characterist8cs if Bloom syndrome?
- smaller than average
- marrow chin, prominent nose and ears
- Fac8al rash (pigment and dilated blood vessels) upon exposure to sun (sometimes called a ‘butterfly’ rash
- often get diabetes and have neurological, lung and immune system deficiencies
- Chromosomal instability resulting in many chromosomal breaks and sister chromatid exchanges
- Higher risk of a broad range of cancer types
Increased sister chromatid exchange in bloom syndromes
Explain spontaneous lesions
Changes that occur in a resting cell due to the chemical nature of the DNA
Extremely common= tens of thousands of mutation events per cell per day
Exposure to mutagens such as sunlight, radioactivity, ionizing, radiation, specific chemicals may increase the rate of this type of DNA damage
Three main types of spontaneous DNA damage:
- depurination
- deamination
- oxidative damage
Explain depurination as a form of spontaneous lesions
Most common form of spontaneous lesions (about 10,000 each day/cell (about 1 in every 10 seconds)
Breaking of glycosidic bond between base and sugar in purine nucleotides
Sugar-phosphate backbone remains but base is lost
If it persists through replication then mutation can occur
Explain deamination as a type of spontaneous lesions
Very common about 5000 a day
Loss of amine group from a base (we can use cytosine as an example)
-cytosine (which base pairs with G) deaminates to form uracil (Uracul would pair with A)
This one is easy to fix- uracul doesn’t belong in dna
Why is 5-methyl cytosine a mutational hotspot?
5-methyl cytosine deaminates to form thymine, so this creates a T-G base pair
-Both of these bases are normally found in DNA; could be repaired back to a “C” (correct pair) or create a mutation “T”
So, repair machinery must guess
Why are methyl cytosine found in mutational hotspots?
Found in CpG islands as discussed in epigenetics
Not all positions are equally mutable, hotspots include things like 5-methyl cytosine or repeated baddd (AAAAA)
The point is that you can see the same mutation occurring at a relatively high frequency in specific pl@ces in the genome