Actions of bleomycin on DNA ligase and polymerases

Bleomycin inhibited the ligase, which was partially purified from rat ascites hepatoma, AH-130, even at a concentration as low as 0.01-1 mug/ml. The DNA degraded by bleomycin was not repaired by ligase. Therefore, it was suggested that bleomycin at higher concentration produced strand scission of DNA, which could not be repaired by the ligase, and at lower concentration inhibited the ligase reaction presumably by binding to DNA strand or to ligase. Also, the specificity of inhibition by bleomycin on the DNA polymerase of oncogenic RNA virus was tested, comparing with the four kinds of DNA polymerases extracted from the spleen of mice infected with Friend virus. Three kinds of DNA polymerases from spleen were not inhibited by bleomycin, but the fourth enzyme, which was induced in the spleen by virus infection, was inhibited by the antibiotic, when poly-d(AT) and poly-dG with dC were used as template.