Exposure to solar radiation can cause mortality in natural communities of pico-phytoplankton, both at the surface and to a depth of at least 30 m. DNA damage is a significant cause of death, mainly due to cyclobutane pyrimidine dimer formation, which can be lethal if not repaired. While developing a UV mutagenesis protocol for the marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus, we isolated a UV-hyper-re...

The product of the umuC gene is required for UV and chemical mutagenesis in Escherichia coli. By the use of the Mud(Ap, lac) bacteriophage, we have obtained an operon fusion of the lac structural genes to the promoter/regulatory region of the umuC gene. The strain containing the umuC::Mud(Ap, lac) fusion was identified on the basis of its UV nonmutability. Strains containing this putative null ...

NDUCED mutations are thought to arise as a result of enzymatic processes uti‘lizing DNA damage as a substrate (BRIDGES 1969). Although the molecular mechanism is not known, evidence reviewed by WITKIN (1969) suggests that in E. coli mutations are produced during postreplication repair of lethal damage induced by ultraviolet light (UV) and controlled by r e d and ezrf (or lexf) genes. Strains ca...

Ultraviolet light (UV) inhibits DNA replication in Eschericia coli and induces the SOS response, a set of survival-enhancing phenotypes due to derepression of DNA damage-inducible genes, including recA and umuDC. Recovery of DNA synthesis after UV irradiation ("induced replisome reactivation," or IRR) is an SOS function requiring RecA protein and postirradiation synthesis of additional protein(...

The genome of a radiation-resistant bacterium, Deinococcus radiodurans, contains one uvsE gene and two uvrA genes, uvrA1 and uvrA2. Using a series of mutants lacking these genes, we determined the biological significance of these components to UV resistance. The UV damage endonuclease (UvsE)-dependent excision repair (UVER) pathway and UvrA1-dependent pathway show some redundancy in their funct...

Plasmid pKM101 provides UV protection and increases the frequency of spontaneous and UV-induced mutations in Escherichia coli. By analyzing reversion patterns of defined trpA alleles, we showed that pKM101 altered the mutational specificity of UV-induced mutations. Certain UV-induced base-pair substitutions were strongly enhanced, while others were decreased in frequency in the presence of pKM1...

All organisms are subject to DNA damage from both endogenous and environmental sources. DNA damage that is not fully repaired can lead to mutations. Mutagenesis is now understood to be an active process, in part facilitated by lower-fidelity DNA polymerases that replicate DNA in an error-prone manner. Y-family DNA polymerases, found throughout all domains of life, are characterized by their low...

The systematic identification of genetic events driving cellular transformation and tumor progression in the absence a highly recurrent oncogenic driver mutation is challenge cutaneous oncology. In squamous cell carcinoma (cuSCC), high UV-induced mutational burden poses hurdle to achieve complete molecular landscape this disease. Here, we utilized Sleeping Beauty transposon mutagenesis system s...