Mechanisms of catalysis of human DNA polymerases alpha and beta

Instantiating a vision: creating the new pathology department at Stanford Medical School

This review represents my best effort to recreate and memorialize events that occurred 44 years ago, when I was invited to join the Stanford University faculty to create, essentially de novo, what rapidly became and remains today one of the very best and most admired departments of pathology in the world. That I was able to accomplish this challenging task I attribute to my holding fast to a somewhat inchoate vision of where the science and practice of pathology would go in future decades, a little bit to my gut instincts and innate ability to spot up-and-coming talent, but a lot to circumstances and good fortune in leading me to a small nucleus of wonderful young professionals of outstanding promise who were willing to join me in "betting the house" that, working together, we could pull off this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity--and we did.

A kinetic study of rat recombinant DNA polymerase beta: detection of a slow (hysteretic) transition in polymerase activity and inhibition by butylphenyl-deoxyguanosine triphosphate

We have identified and characterized a distinct non-linearity in the time course of the reaction of mammalian DNA polymerase beta with synthetic polynucleotides. Nucleotide incorporation is biphasic; an initial burst of activity decays exponentially to a lower steady-state velocity. This slow transition in polymerase activity is not due to substrate depletion, abortive complex formation, or enzyme inactivation. The data are consistent with description of the beta-polymerase as a hysteretic enzyme, a finding which provides a potential explanation for the non-hyperbolic kinetics which have been reported previously for this polymerase. We have also found, in contrast to some previous data, that the nucleotide analogue, N2-(p-n-butylphenyl)-2'-deoxyguanosine-5'-triphosphate (BuPdGTP), is an inhibitor of the beta-polymerase. When poly(dC).oligo(dG) is used as template.primer, inhibition of the initial velocity is competitive with dGTP with a Ki of 1.25 microM. On activated DNA, however, beta-polymerase displays sensitivity to BuPdGTP which overlaps with that previously reported for DNA polymerase delta; 100 microM BuPdGTP is required to inhibit the initial velocity of a dGTP-deficient, truncated assay. Finally, we demonstrate that, in addition to its inhibition of initial velocity, BuPdGTP also modulates both the rate constant of the slow transition in polymerase activity, and the steady-state velocity of the beta-polymerase.

Excision repair of DNA in the presence of aphidicolin

During excision repair of UV light or dimethyl sulphate (DMS)-induced damage to DNA the patch size for actively replicating KB or T98G cells is around 20 nucleotides. When confluent T98G cells or 'quiescent' KB cells are used the patch size is around 10 nucleotides. This value can be increased to around 20 nucleotides in T98G cells if a large excess of BrdUrd is included in the repair incubation medium. With 'quiescent' KB cells the patch size is not increased by excess BrdUrd. For all of these experimental conditions, when excision repair of UV or DMS damage takes place in the presence of aphidicolin, the patch size is found to be several times that found in its absence. Given the inhibitory specificity of aphidicolin for DNA polymerase alpha these results provide additional evidence that DNA polymerase alpha plays a role in the excision repair of DNA damaged by UV light or DMS. It is postulated that aphidicolin interrupts the processivity of the DNA polymerase alpha holoenzyme and allows an exonuclease to enlarge the repair site.

Nature of DNA repair synthesis resistant to inhibitors of polymerase alpha in human cells

Arabinocytidine and aphidicolin are inhibitors of alpha-DNA polymerase that have been shown to affect both normal DNA replication and repair synthesis in mammalian cells. In contradiction to the prevalent hypothesis that these inhibitors merely slow the polymerization rate at incision sites near lesions, our results suggest that the repair synthesis resistant to inhibitors is mediated by a separate pathway. Repair synthesis in contact-inhibited human cells following UV irradiation was inhibited 75-80% by arabinocytidine or aphidicolin, and most of the repair patches were not ligated into parental DNA, as judged by an enzymatic assay. However, the patches were not demonstrably shorter than those in untreated cells. Even following low-UV doses at which no inhibition of repair synthesis by the inhibitors was observed, a majority of the patches were not ligated. DNA polymerase beta is implicated in this alternate pathway, both by the known specificity of the inhibitors and by evidence from their sensitivity to S1 nuclease that the patches arise from displacement synthesis. The unligated patches are not degraded in vivo and eventually become ligated into parental DNA, very slowly in the presence of inhibitors but much more rapidly following their removal. Thus, under conditions of alpha-polymerase inhibition, a limited number of normal length repair patches are made, apparently by displacement synthesis, leaving displaced strands that remain substantially undegraded.