Repair of furocoumarin adducts in mammalian cells

We studied DNA repair in cultured mammalian cells treated with the furocoumarins 8-methoxypsoralen (8-MOP), aminomethyl trioxsalen, or angelicin and irradiated with near UV light. The amount of DNA cross-linked by 8-MOP in normal human cells decreased by about one-half in 24 hours after treatment; no decrease was observed in xeroderma pigmentosum cells, group A. At present, it is not known to what extent this decrease represents complete repair events at the sites of cross-links. Furocoumarin adducts elicited excision repair in normal human and monkey cells but not in xeroderma pigmentosum group A cells. This excision repair resembled in several aspects that elicited by pyrimidine dimers, formed in DNA by irradiation with 254-nm UV light; however, it appeared that for at least 8-MOP and aminomethyl trioxsalen, removal of adducts was not as efficient as was the removal of pyrimidine dimers. We also compared repair in the 172-base-pair repetitive alpha-DNA component of monkey cells to repair in the bulk of the genome. Although repair elicited by pyrimidine dimers in alpha-DNA was the same as in the bulk DNA, that following treatment of cells with either aminomethyl trioxsalen or angelicin and near UV was markedly deficient in alpha-DNA. This deficiency reflected the removal of fewer adducts from alpha-DNA after the same initial adduct frequencies. These results could mean that each furocoumarin may produce several structurally distinct adducts to DNA in cells and that the capacity of cellular repair systems to remove these various adducts may vary greatly.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)