Figure 2.

Experimental outline. (a) A schematic diagram illustrating the procedures for the construction of the plasmids harboring a site-specifically incorporated N3-CMdT or O⁴-CMdT. (b) Strategy for assessing the impact of the CMdT lesions on DNA transcription. The non-lesion competitor vector has the same sequence as the lesion-bearing vector except for three more bases near the lesion region. ‘X’ indicates dT, N3-CMdT or O⁴-CMdT, and the arrowheads indicate the +1 transcription start sites of the cytomegalovirus (CMV) and T7 promoters.