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Mutations induced by 8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanine in WRN- and DNA polymerase &lgr;-double knockdown cells

Reactive oxygen species generate 8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanine (GO, 8-hydroxyguanine), which induces G:C→T:A transversion mutations. The knockdowns of the protein responsible for Werner syndrome (WRN), a cancer-associated DNA helicase, and DNA polymerase (pol) λ, a WRN-interacting DNA pol, cause untargeted base-substitution mutations (action-at-a-distance mutations). To examine the consequences of the dual reductions of WRN and pol λ for the mutations caused by GO, siRNAs against both proteins were introduced into human U2OS cells. A replicable plasmid DNA with the oxidised nucleobase in a unique position of the supF gene was then introduced into the double knockdown cells. The amplified DNA recovered from the cells was used to transform a bacterial indicator strain. The mutant frequency and the subsequent sequence analysis revealed that the double knockdown additively promoted the G:C→T:A substitution at the GO position and increased the action-at-a-distance mutations to a level similar to that of the single WRN knockdown. Thus, WRN and DNA pol λ seem to suppress the targeted G:C→T:A mutation at least in part independently and reduce the untargeted mutations via an identical pathway.