Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Structural basis for removal of adenine mispaired with 8-oxoguanine by MutY adenine DNA glycosylase

A Correction to this article was published on 12 February 2004

Abstract

The genomes of aerobic organisms suffer chronic oxidation of guanine to the genotoxic product 8-oxoguanine (oxoG)1. Replicative DNA polymerases misread oxoG residues and insert adenine instead of cytosine opposite the oxidized base. Both bases in the resulting A·oxoG mispair are mutagenic lesions, and both must undergo base-specific replacement to restore the original C·G pair. Doing so represents a formidable challenge to the DNA repair machinery, because adenine makes up roughly 25% of the bases in most genomes. The evolutionarily conserved enzyme adenine DNA glycosylase (called MutY in bacteria and hMYH in humans) initiates repair of A·oxoG to C·G by removing the inappropriately paired adenine base from the DNA backbone. A central issue concerning MutY function is the mechanism by which A·oxoG mispairs are targeted among the vast excess of A·T pairs. Here we report the use of disulphide crosslinking2 to obtain high-resolution crystal structures of MutY–DNA lesion-recognition complexes. These structures reveal the basis for recognizing both lesions in the A·oxoG pair and for catalysing removal of the adenine base.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Pathway for oxidation and repair of guanine in DNA.
Figure 2: MutY–DNA complex.
Figure 3: Enzyme–DNA interface and oxoG recognition.
Figure 4: Close-up views of the MutY active site.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Lindahl, T. Instability and decay of the primary structure of DNA. Nature 362, 709–715 (1993)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Norman, D. P. G. & Verdine, G. L. Covalent trapping of protein–DNA complexes. Annu. Rev. Biochem. 72, 337–366 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Gogos, A., Cillo, J., Clarke, N. D. & Lu, A. L. Specific recognition of A/G and A/7,8-dihydro-8-oxoguanine (8-oxoG) mismatches by Escherichia coli MutY: removal of the C-terminal domain preferentially affects A/8-oxoG recognition. Biochemistry 35, 16665–16671 (1996)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Noll, D. M., Gogos, A., Granek, J. A. & Clarke, N. D. The C-terminal domain of the adenine-DNA glycosylase MutY confers specificity for 8-oxoguanine·adenine mispairs and may have evolved from MutT, an 8-oxo-dGTPase. Biochemistry 38, 6374–6379 (1999)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Guan, Y. et al. MutY catalytic core, mutant and bound adenine structures define specificity for DNA repair enzyme superfamily. Nature Struct. Biol. 5, 1058–1064 (1998)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Volk, D. E. et al. Structural similarities between MutT and the C-terminal domain of MutY. Biochemistry 39, 7331–7336 (2000)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Hollis, T., Ichikawa, Y. & Ellenberger, T. DNA bending and a flip-out mechanism for base excision by the helix–hairpin–helix DNA glycosylase. Escherichia coli AlkA. EMBO J. 19, 758–766 (2000)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Bruner, S. D., Norman, D. P. & Verdine, G. L. Structural basis for recognition and repair of the endogenous mutagen 8-oxoguanine in DNA. Nature 403, 859–866 (2000)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Fromme, J. C. & Verdine, G. L. Structure of a trapped endonuclease III–DNA covalent intermediate. EMBO J. 22, 3461–3471 (2003)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Bernards, A. S., Miller, J. K., Bao, K. K. & Wong, I. Flipping duplex DNA inside out: a double base-flipping reaction mechanism by Escherichia coli MutY adenine glycosylase. J. Biol. Chem. 277, 20960–20964 (2002)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Kouchakdjian, M. et al. NMR structural studies of the ionizing radiation adduct 7-hydro-8-oxodeoxyguanosine (8-oxo-7H-dG) opposite deoxyadenosine in a DNA duplex. 8-Oxo-7H-dG(syn)·dA(anti) alignment at lesion site. Biochemistry 30, 1403–1412 (1991)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. McAuley-Hecht, K. E. et al. Crystal structure of a DNA duplex containing 8-hydroxydeoxyguanine–adenine base pairs. Biochemistry 33, 10266–10270 (1994)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Lin, J., Abeygunawardana, C., Frick, D. N., Bessman, M. J. & Mildvan, A. S. Solution structure of the quaternary MutT–M2+–AMPCPP–M2+ complex and mechanism of its pyrophosphohydrolase action. Biochemistry 36, 1199–1211 (1997)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Massiah, M. A., Saraswat, V., Azurmendi, H. F. & Mildvan, A. S. Solution structure and NH exchange studies of the MutT pyrophosphohydrolase complexed with Mg2+ and 8-oxo-dGMP, a tightly bound product. Biochemistry 42, 10140–10154 (2003)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Plum, G. E., Grollman, A. P., Johnson, F. & Breslauer, K. J. Influence of the oxidatively damaged adduct 8-oxodeoxyguanosine on the conformation, energetics, and thermodynamic stability of a DNA duplex. Biochemistry 34, 16148–16160 (1995)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Porello, S. L., Leyes, A. E. & David, S. S. Single-turnover and pre-steady-state kinetics of the reaction of the adenine glycosylase MutY with mismatch-containing DNA substrates. Biochemistry 37, 14756–14764 (1998)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. Werner, R. M. & Stivers, J. T. Kinetic isotope effect studies of the reaction catalyzed by uracil DNA glycosylase: evidence for an oxocarbenium ion–uracil anion intermediate. Biochemistry 39, 14054–14064 (2000)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Dinner, A. R., Blackburn, G. M. & Karplus, M. Uracil-DNA glycosylase acts by substrate autocatalysis. Nature 413, 752–755 (2001)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Porello, S. L., Williams, S. D., Kuhn, H., Michaels, M. L. & David, S. S. Specific recognition of substrate analogs by the DNA mismatch repair enzyme MutY. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 118, 10684–10692 (1996)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Al-Tassan, N. et al. Inherited variants of MYH associated with somatic G:C → T:A mutations in colorectal tumors. Nature Genet. 30, 227–232 (2002)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Jones, S. et al. Biallelic germline mutations in MYH predispose to multiple colorectal adenoma and somatic G:C → T:A mutations. Hum. Mol. Genet. 11, 2961–2967 (2002)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. Sieber, O. M. et al. Multiple colorectal adenomas, classic adenomatous polyposis, and germ-line mutations in MYH. N. Engl. J. Med. 348, 791–799 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Chmiel, N. H., Livingston, A. L. & David, S. S. Insight into the functional consequences of inherited variants of the hMYH adenine glycosylase associated with colorectal cancer: complementation assays with hMYH variants and pre-steady-state kinetics of the corresponding mutated E. coli enzymes. J. Mol. Biol. 327, 431–443 (2003)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. Nicholls, A., Sharp, K. A. & Honig, B. Protein folding and association: insights from the interfacial and thermodynamic properties of hydrocarbons. Proteins Struct. Funct. Genet. 11, 281–296 (1991)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank H. Nash for the reduced abasic phosphoramidite; Y. Korkhin for assistance with data collection and processing; M. Becker for beamline assistance; S. Bruner and J. J. Miranda for critically reading the manuscript; and Enanta Pharmaceuticals for use of their X-ray generator and detector. Some data for this study were measured at beamline X25 of the National Synchrotron Light Source; financial support for this beamline comes from the NIH and the United States Department of Energy.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gregory L. Verdine.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary figure 1: Disulfide cross-linking strategy and results. (PDF 164 kb)

Supplementary figure 2: Stereoview of the interactions between the enzyme and oxoG-strand of DNA. (PDF 166 kb)

41586_2004_BFnature02306_MOESM3_ESM.pdf

Supplementary figure 3: MutY Sequence alignment showing the amino acid sequences from humans, the bacterium Escherichia coli (E.co.), the thermophilic bacterium Bacillus stearothermophilus (B.st., the ortholog used in this work), and the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe (S.po.). (PDF 93 kb)

Supplementary figure 4: Structural and crystallographic results. (PDF 126 kb)

Supplementary figure 5: Substrate and product adenine active site superposition. (PDF 129 kb)

Supplementary table: Crystallographic statistics. (PDF 81 kb)

Supplementary information, methods and figure legends. (PDF 42 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Fromme, J., Banerjee, A., Huang, S. et al. Structural basis for removal of adenine mispaired with 8-oxoguanine by MutY adenine DNA glycosylase. Nature 427, 652–656 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02306

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02306

This article is cited by

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing