Evidence for in vitro translesion DNA synthesis past a site-specific aminofluorene adduct

The ability of Escherichia coli DNA polymerase I and T7 DNA polymerase to bypass bulky C-8 guanyl-2-aminofluorene adducts in DNA was studied by in vitro DNA synthesis reactions on a site-specific aminofluorene-modified M13mp9 template. This site-specifically modified DNA was prepared by ligating an oligonucleotide containing a single aminofluorene adduct into a gapped heteroduplex of M13mp9 DNA (Johnson, D. L., Reid, T. M., Lee, M.-S., King, C. M., and Romano, L. J. (1986) Biochemistry 25, 449-456). The resulting covalently closed duplex DNA molecule was then cleaved with a restriction endonuclease, denatured, and annealed to a primer on the 3' side of the adduct to form a template specifically designed to study bypass. In this system, any synthesis that was not blocked by the bulky aminofluorene adduct would proceed to the 5' terminus of the single-stranded template, while synthesis interrupted by the adduct would terminate at or near the adduct location. We have measured DNA synthesis on this template and find that the amount of radiolabeled nucleotide incorporated by either E. coli DNA polymerase I (large fragment) or T7 DNA polymerase was much greater than would be predicted if the aminofluorene adduct were an absolute block to DNA synthesis. Furthermore, the products of similar reactions electrophoresed on polyacrylamide gels showed conclusively that the majority of the DNA synthesized by either the T7 DNA polymerase or E. coli DNA polymerase I bypassed the aminofluorene lesion. Substitution of Mn2+ for Mg2+ as the divalent cation resulted in even higher levels of translesion synthesis.