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Mutagenesis Advance Access originally published online on March 23, 2006
Mutagenesis 2006 21(2):153-158; doi:10.1093/mutage/gel013
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the UK Environmental Mutagen Society. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Development and validation of a modified comet assay to phenotypically assess nucleotide excision repair

Sabine A.S. Langie1, Ad M. Knaapen1, Karen J.J. Brauers1, Damien van Berlo1,2, Frederik-Jan van Schooten1 and Roger W.L. Godschalk1,*

1Nutrition and Toxicology Research Institute Maastricht (NUTRIM), Department of Health Risk Analysis and Toxicology, Maastricht University, 6200 MD, PO Box 616, Maastricht, The Netherlands and 2Institut für Umweltmedizinische Forschung (IUF), Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, Germany

There is an increasing need for simple and reliable approaches to phenotypically assess DNA repair capacities. Therefore, a modification of the alkaline comet assay was developed to determine the ability of human lymphocyte extracts to perform the initial steps of the nucleotide excision repair (NER) process, i.e. damage recognition and incision. Gel-embedded nucleoids from A549 cells, pre-exposed to 1 µM benzo[a]pyrene-diol-epoxide, were incubated with cell extracts from frozen or freshly isolated lymphocytes. The rate at which incisions are introduced and the subsequent increase in tail moment is indicative for the repair capacity of the extracts. Freshly prepared extracts from lymphocytes of human volunteers (n = 8) showed significant inter-individual variations in their DNA repair capacity, which correlated with the removal of bulky DNA lesions over a period of 48 h determined by 32P-post-labelling (R2 = 0.76, P = 0.005). Repeated measurements revealed a low inter-assay variation (11%). Storage of cell extracts for more than 3 weeks significantly reduced (up to 80%) the capacity to incise the damaged DNA as compared to freshly isolated extracts. This reduction was completely restored by addition of ATP to the extracts before use, as it is required for the incision step of NER. In contrast, extracts freshly prepared from frozen lymphocyte pellets can be used without loss of repair activity. DNA repair deficient XPA–/– and XPC–/– fibroblasts were used to further validate the assay. Although some residual capacity to incise the DNA was observed in these cells, the repair activity was restored to normal wild-type levels when a complementary mixture of both extracts (thereby restoring XPA and XPC deficiency) was used. These results demonstrate that this repair assay can be applied in molecular epidemiological studies to assess inter-individual differences in NER.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +31 43 388 1104; Fax: +31 43 388 4146; Email: R.Godschalk{at}GRAT.unimaas.nl

Received on January 19, 2006; received and accepted on February 14, 2006


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