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. 1992 Feb 15;89(4):1159–1163. doi: 10.1073/pnas.89.4.1159

Mechanism of SOS mutagenesis of UV-irradiated DNA: mostly error-free processing of deaminated cytosine.

I Tessman 1, S K Liu 1, M A Kennedy 1
PMCID: PMC48408  PMID: 1741372

Abstract

We measured the kinetics of growth and mutagenesis of UV-irradiated DNA of phages S13 and lambda that were undergoing SOS repair; the kinetics strongly suggest that most of SOS mutagenesis arises from the deamination of cytosine in cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers, producing C----T transitions. This occurs because the SOS mechanism bypasses T--T dimers promptly, while bypass of cytosine-containing dimers is delayed long enough for deamination to occur. The mutations are thus primarily the product of a faithful mechanism of lesion bypass by a DNA polymerase and are not, as had been generally thought, the product of an error-prone mechanism. All of these observations are explained by the A-rule, which is that adenine nucleotides are inserted noninstructionally opposite DNA lesions.

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Selected References

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