Molecular mechanisms for controlling spontaneous and induced mutagenesis

Abstract

Errors in the replication of DNA are a major source of spontaneous mutations, and a number of cellular functions are involved in correction of these errors to keep the frequency of spontaneous mutations very low. We report here a novel mechanism which prevents replicational errors by degrading a potent mutagenic substrate for DNA synthesis. We also deal with suppression of alkylation-induced mutations by O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase.