Processing of ring saturation and fragmentation products of DNA thymine in Escherichia coli

The biological processing of thymine ring saturation and fragmentation products is summarized in Table 1. The ring saturation product, thymine glycol, is a block to in vitro DNA synthesis, whereas the ring saturation product, dihydrothymine, is not. Both these lesions are recognized in vitro by endonucleases III and VIII. Since thymine glycol is a replicative block, it is a lethal lesion in vivo. The excision repair process for removal of thymine glycols from DNA is initiated in vivo by endonuclease III and is followed by the action of either exonuclease III or endonuclease IV. Thymine glycol is very efficiently bypassed by translesion bypass in both single and double stranded DNA, however, because thymine glycol templates an adenine (A) and retains pairing characteristics, it is at best a weakly mutagenic lesion. The thymine ring fragmentation product, urea, and apurinic/apyrimidinic (AP) sites are both strong blocks to in vitro DNA synthesis. Both are substrates in vitro for endonucleases III, IV, VIII and IX as well as exonuclease III. Both are lethal lesions in single stranded and double stranded phage transfecting DNA. The excision repair of urea residues and AP sites is initiated in vivo by either exonuclease III or endonuclease IV. Neither of these noninstructive lesions are efficiently bypassed by UV-induced translesion bypass, however, when bypass occurs mutations result. beta-ureidoisobutylic acid is also a block to DNA synthesis in vitro. DNA containing this lesion is a substrate for endonucleases VIII and IX. The biological processing of this ring open thymine fragmentation product has yet to be determined. Thus, these ring saturation and fragmentation products of thymine have provided a point of departure for understanding the biological processing of modified bases with altered pairing and/or stacking properties.