Structural basis of DNA mutagenesis

T. Brown and O. Kennard. Curr. Opin. Struct. Biol. 2 (3), 354-360, 1992.

Abstract

The scope of this review covers those NMR and X-ray crystallographic structural analyses that have been carried out in recent months on a number of mutagenic lesions, mismatched base pairs and a mutational hotspot in synthetic DNA duplexes. The structure of DNA duplexes containing the mutagenic bases O(6)-methyl deoxyguanosine, O(6)-ethyl deoxyguanosine, 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine and 1,N(6)-ethenodeoxyadenosine are discussed. Recent studies on DNA duplexes containing G·A mismatched base pairs are also reviewed. Finally, an important study of a dodecamer containing a sequence corresponding to a hotspot for frameshift mutagenesis is described. This structure contains a novel type of groove backbone interaction and novel base mispairing which suggest a molecular model for frameshift substitution mutagenesis.