We show here that the African swine fever virus (ASFV) protein pE296R, predicted to be a class II apurinic/apyrimidinic (AP) endonuclease, possesses endonucleolytic activity specific for AP sites. Biochemical characterization of the purified recombinant enzyme indicated that the K(m) and catalytic efficiency values for the endonucleolytic reaction are in the range of those reported for Escheric...

King et al. (King, K., Benkovic, S. J., and Modrich, P. (1989) 264, 11807-11815) have shown that Glu-111 is required for DNA cleavage by EcoRI endonuclease and have suggested that this residue is required for activation of the cleavage center upon specific recognition. We have substituted Gln or Asp for Glu-111 by oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis. First and second strand cleavage rate const...

Cells repair DNA damage via four main mechanisms, however, damage induced by alkylators and oxidative damage is predominantly repaired by the DNA base excision repair (BER) pathway. The AP endonuclease, APE1, is one of the main enzymes in the BER pathway. It is abundant in human cells and accounts for nearly all of the abasic site cleavage activity observed in cellular extracts. APE1 expression...

The photoactivatable modified oligonucleotides were used to investigate direct contacts formed by the type IIE EcoRII restriction endonuclease and T/A bases of its recognition site (5'-CCT/AGG). dimer consists a central catalytic core, made two C-terminal endonuclease-like domains (EcoRII-C) from different subunits, N-terminal effector DNA binding (EcoRII-N). According co-crystal structure isol...

Many environmental metals are co-carcinogens, eliciting their effects via inhibition of DNA repair. Apurinic/apyrimidinic (AP) endonuclease 1 (Ape1) is the major mammalian abasic endonuclease and initiates repair of this cytotoxic/mutagenic lesion by incising the DNA backbone via a Mg(2+)-dependent reaction. In this study we examined the effects of arsenite [As(III)], cadmium [Cd(II)], cobalt [...

Cleavage of viral DNA by the bacterial Type III Restriction-Modification enzymes requires the ATP-dependent long-range communication between a distant pair of DNA recognition sequences. The classical view is that Type III endonuclease activity is only activated by a pair of asymmetric sites in a specific head-to-head inverted repeat. Based on this assumption and due to the presence of helicase ...

Apurinic sites disappear from DNA during an incubation of the DNA with the Escherichia coli endonuclease specific for apurinic sites, DNA polymerase I (EC 2.7.7.7.), and T4 ligase (EC 6.5.1.1). Omission of any one of these three enzymes and, in particular, omission of the endonuclease specific for apurinic sites prevents this in vitro repair.