Biology before the SOS Response—DNA Damage Mechanisms at Chromosome Fragile Sites

Abstract

The Escherichia coli SOS response to DNA damage, discovered and conceptualized by Evelyn Witkin and Miroslav Radman, is the prototypic DNA-damage stress response that upregulates proteins of DNA protection and repair, a radical idea when formulated in the late 1960s and early 1970s. SOS-like responses are now described across the tree of life, and similar mechanisms of DNA-damage tolerance and repair underlie the genome instability that drives human cancer and aging. The DNA damage that precedes damage responses constitutes upstream threats to genome integrity and arises mostly from endogenous biology. Radman’s vision and work on SOS, mismatch repair, and their regulation of genome and species evolution, were extrapolated directly from bacteria to humans, at a conceptual level, by Radman, then many others. We follow his lead in exploring bacterial molecular genomic mechanisms to illuminate universal biology, including in human disease, and focus here on some events upstream of SOS: the origins of DNA damage, specifically at chromosome fragile sites, and the engineered proteins that allow us to identify mechanisms. Two fragility mechanisms dominate: one at replication barriers and another associated with the decatenation of sister chromosomes following replication. DNA structures in E. coli, additionally, suggest new interpretations of pathways in cancer evolution, and that Holliday junctions may be universal molecular markers of chromosome fragility.

Antibiotic Effect of High-Power Blue Laser Radiation

“…During the DNA repair process, usually induced by UV light, the RecA recombinase binds single-stranded and double-stranded DNA during double-strand breaks to allow for a healing recombination process. During the same process, RecN is responsible for higher-ordered DNA compaction [49][50][51]. The also observed response to copper and zinc ions, visible in the upregulation of copA (LogFC 1.9, encoding a copper-exportin P-type ATPase) and zraP (LogFC 1.55, encoding a zinc resistance sensor/chaperone), relates to the SOS response in E. coli.…”