A mutant of uracil DNA glycosylase that distinguishes between cytosine and 5-methylcytosine

Structural insights into the specificity and catalytic mechanism of mycobacterial nucleotide pool sanitizing enzyme MutT2

Mis-incorporation of modified nucleotides, such as 5-methyl-dCTP or 8-oxo-dGTP, in DNA can be detrimental to genomic integrity. MutT proteins are sanitization enzymes which function by hydrolyzing such nucleotides and regulating the pool of free nucleotides in the cytoplasm. Mycobacterial genomes have a set of four MutT homologs, namely, MutT1, MutT2, MutT3 and MutT4. Mycobacterial MutT2 hydrolyzes 5 m-dCTP and 8-oxo-dGTP to their respective monophosphate products. Additionally, it can hydrolyze canonical nucleotides dCTP and CTP, with a suggested role in sustaining their optimal levels in the nucleotide pool. The structures of M. smegmatis MutT2 and its complexes with cytosine derivatives have been determined at resolutions ranging from 1.10 Å to 1.73 Å. The apo enzyme and its complexes with products (dCMP, CMP and 5 m-dCMP) crystallize in space group P2₁2₁2, while those involving substrates (dCTP, CTP and 5 m-dCTP) crystallize in space group P2_1. The molecule takes an α/β/α sandwich fold arrangement, as observed in other MutT homologs. The nucleoside moiety of the ligands is similarly located in all the complexes, while the location of the remaining tail exhibits variability. This is the first report of a MutT2-type protein in complex with ligands. A critical interaction involving Asp116 confers the specificity of the enzyme towards cytosine moieties. A conserved set of enzyme-ligand interactions along with concerted movements of important water molecules provide insights into the mechanism of action.

The effect of sequence context on the activity of cytosine DNA glycosylases

We have prepared single (N204D) and double (N204D:L272A) mutants of human uracil DNA glycosylase (hUDG), generating two cytosine DNA glycosylases (hCDG and hCYDG). Both these enzymes are able to excise cytosine (but not 5-methylcytosine), when this base is part of a mismatched base pair. hCDG is more active than the equivalent E. coli enzyme (eCYDG) and also has some activity when the cytosine is paired with guanine, unlike eCYDG. hCDG also has some activity against single stranded DNA, while having poor activity towards an unnatural base pair that forces the cytosine into an extrahelical conformation (in contrast to eCYDG for which a bulky base enhances the enzyme's activity). We also examined how sequence context affects the activity of these enzymes, determining the effect of flanking base pairs on cleavage efficiency. An abasic site or a hexaethylene glycol linker placed opposite the target cytosine, also causes an increase in activity compared with an AC mismatch. Flanking an AC mismatch with GC base pairs resulted in a 100-fold decrease in excision activity relative to flanking AT base pairs and the 5'-flanking base pair had a greater effect on the rate of cleavage. However, this effect is not simply due to the stability of the flanking base pairs as adjacent GT mismatches also produce low cleavage efficiency.