Misincorporation of (TP during transcription of poly dAT-dAT and poly dABU-dABU

The synthetic DNA alternating copolymers poly dAT-dAT and dABU-dABU have been transcribed with E. coli RNA polymerase to measure the level of BrdU-induced misincorporation of guanine during transcription. GTP is found to be misincorporated into both copolymers at a frequency of 1 per 1000-2000 nucleotides polymerized. Using alpha-32P-GTP, the nearest neighbors to GMP are found to be UMP (approximately 63%), GMP (approximately 25%) and AMP (approximately 17%), with no apparent difference between the two templates. These results suggest that BrdU-substitution in DNA does not necessarily increase the potential for base mispairing during transcription, and hence, promote the production of faulty RNA molecules.