8-Oxoguanine-DNA glycosylase 1 (OGG1), with intrinsic AP lyase activity, is the major enzyme for repairing 7,8-dihydro-8-oxoguanine (8-oxoG), a critical mutagenic DNA lesion induced by reactive oxygen species. Human OGG1 excised the damaged base from an 8-oxoG. C-containing duplex oligo with a very low apparent k(cat) of 0.1 min(-1) at 37 degrees C and cleaved abasic (AP) sites at half the rate, thus leaving abasic sites as the major product. Excision of 8-oxoG by OGG1 alone did not follow Michaelis-Menten kinetics. However, in the presence of a comparable amount of human AP endonuclease (APE1) the specific activity of OGG1 was increased approximately 5-fold and Michaelis-Menten kinetics were observed. Inactive APE1, at a higher molar ratio, and a bacterial APE (Nfo) similarly enhanced OGG1 activity. The affinity of OGG1 for its product AP.C pair (K:(d) approximately 2.8 nM) was substantially higher than for its substrate 8-oxoG.C pair (K:(d) approximately 23. 4 nM) and the affinity for its final ss-elimination product was much lower (K:(d) approximately 233 nM). These data, as well as single burst kinetics studies, indicate that the enzyme remains tightly bound to its AP product following base excision and that APE1 prevents its reassociation with its product, thus enhancing OGG1 turnover. These results suggest coordinated functions of OGG1 and APE1, and possibly other enzymes, in the DNA base excision repair pathway.

In cerebral ischemia, matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) have a dual role by acutely disrupting tight junction proteins (TJPs) in the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and chronically promoting angiogenesis. Since TJP remodeling of the neurovascular unit (NVU) is important in recovery and early inhibition of MMPs is neuroprotective, we hypothesized that short-term MMP inhibition would reduce infarct size and promote angiogenesis after ischemia. Adult spontaneously hypertensive rats had a transient middle cerebral artery occlusion with reperfusion. At the onset of ischemia, they received a single dose of the MMP inhibitor, GM6001. They were studied at multiple times up to 4 weeks with immunohistochemistry, biochemistry, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We observed newly formed vessels in peri-infarct regions at 3 weeks after reperfusion. Dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI showed BBB opening in new vessels. Along with the new vessels, pericytes expressed zonula occludens-1 (ZO-1) and MMP-3, astrocytes expressed ZO-1, occludin, and MMP-2, while endothelial cells expressed claudin-5. The GM6001, which reduced tissue loss at 3 to 4 weeks, significantly increased new vessel formation with expression of TJPs and MMPs. Our results show that pericytes and astrocytes act spatiotemporally, contributing to extraendothelial TJP formation, and that MMPs are involved in BBB restoration during recovery. Early MMP inhibition benefits neurovascular remodeling after stroke.

Human 8-oxoguanine-DNA glycosylase (OGG1) is the major enzyme for repairing 8-oxoguanine (8-oxoG), a mutagenic guanine base lesion produced by reactive oxygen species (ROS). A frequently occurring OGG1 polymorphism in human populations results in the substitution of serine 326 for cysteine (S326C). The 326 C/C genotype is linked to numerous cancers, although the mechanism of carcinogenesis associated with the variant is unclear. We performed detailed enzymatic studies of polymorphic OGG1 and found functional defects in the enzyme. S326C OGG1 excised 8-oxoG from duplex DNA and cleaved abasic sites at rates 2- to 6-fold lower than the wild-type enzyme, depending upon the base opposite the lesion. Binding experiments showed that the polymorphic OGG1 binds DNA damage with significantly less affinity than the wild-type enzyme. Remarkably, gel shift, chemical cross-linking and gel filtration experiments showed that S326C both exists in solution and binds damaged DNA as a dimer. S326C OGG1 enzyme expressed in human cells was also found to have reduced activity and a dimeric conformation. The glycosylase activity of S326C OGG1 was not significantly stimulated by the presence of AP-endonuclease. The altered substrate specificity, lack of stimulation by AP-endonuclease 1 (APE1) and anomalous DNA binding conformation of S326C OGG1 may contribute to its linkage to cancer incidence.

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Degradation of the extracellular matrix by elevated matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) activity following ischemia/reperfusion is implicated in blood–brain barrier disruption and neuronal death. In contrast to their characterized extracellular roles, we previously reported that elevated intranuclear MMP-2 and -9 (gelatinase) activity degrades nuclear DNA repair proteins and promotes accumulation of oxidative DNA damage in neurons in rat brain at 3-h reperfusion after ischemic stroke. Here, we report that treatment with a broad-spectrum MMP inhibitor significantly reduced neuronal apoptosis in rat ischemic hemispheres at 48-h reperfusion after a 90-min middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO). Since extracellular gelatinases in brain tissue are known to be neurotoxic during acute stroke, the contribution of intranuclear MMP-2 and -9 activities in neurons to neuronal apoptosis has been unclear. To confirm and extend our in vivo observations, oxygen–glucose deprivation (OGD), an in vitro model of ischemia/reperfusion, was employed. Primary cortical neurons were subjected to 2-h OGD with reoxygenation. Increased intranuclear gelatinase activity was detected immediately after reoxygenation onset and was maximal at 24 h, while extracellular gelatinase levels remained unchanged. We detected elevated levels of both MMP-2 and -9 in neuronal nuclear extracts and gelatinase activity in neurons co-localized primarily with MMP-2. We found a marked decrease in PARP1, XRCC1, and OGG1, and decreased PARP1 activity. Pretreatment of neurons with selective MMP-2/9 inhibitor II significantly decreased gelatinase activity and downregulation of DNA repair enzymes, decreased accumulation of oxidative DNA damage, and promoted neuronal survival after OGD. Our results confirm the nuclear localization of gelatinases and their nuclear substrates observed in an animal stroke model, further supporting a novel role for intranuclear gelatinase activity in an intrinsic apoptotic pathway in neurons during acute stroke injury.

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The oxidized base 8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanine (8-oxoG), the product of deamination of cytosine uracil (U), and the sites of base loss [abasic (AP) sites] are among the most frequent mutagenic lesions formed in the human genome under physiological conditions. In human cells, the enzymatic activities initiating DNA base excision repair (BER) of 8-oxoG, U and AP sites are the 8-oxoG DNA glycosylase (hOGG1), the U-DNA glycosylase (UNG) and the major hydrolytic AP endonuclease (APE/HAP1), respectively. In recent work, we observed that BER of the three lesions occurs in human cell extracts with different efficacy. In particular, 8-oxoG is repaired on average 4-fold less efficiently than U, which, in turn, is repaired 7-fold slower than the natural AP site. To discriminate whether the different rates of repair may be linked to different expression of the initiating enzymes, we have determined the amount of hOGG1, UNG and APE/HAP1 in normal human cell extracts by immunodetection techniques. Our results show that a single human fibroblast contains 123 000 +/- 22 000 hOGG1 molecules, 178 000 +/- 20 000 UNG molecules and 297 000 +/- 50 000 APE/HAP1 molecules. These limited differences in enzyme expression levels cannot readily explain the different rates at which the three lesions are repaired in vitro. Addition to reaction mixtures of titrated amounts of purified hOGG1, UNG and APE/HAP1 variably stimulated the in vitro repair replication of 8-oxoG, U and the AP site respectively and the increase was not always proportional to the amount of added enzyme. We conclude that the rates of BER depend only in part on cellular levels of initiating enzymes.