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Mutagenesis Advance Access originally published online on July 14, 2007
Mutagenesis 2007 22(5):353-357; doi:10.1093/mutage/gem023
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the UK Environmental Mutagen Society. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

The instability of (GpT)n and (ApC)n microsatellites induced by formaldehyde in Escherichia coli

Wei Wang, Jun Xu, Liu Xu1, Bisong Yue and Fangdong Zou*

Key Laboratory of Bio-resources and Eco-environment (Ministry of Education), College of Life Sciences, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610064, People's Republic Southwest of Jiaotong University, China 1College of Bioengineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 610031, People's Republic of China

Formaldehyde, a potential human nasal carcinogen, has been reported to induce DNA lesions. However, the effect of formaldehyde on microsatellite instability has not previously been reported. Plasmids containing different lengths of complementary (ApC)n or (GpT)n dinucleotide repeats on the leading strand were constructed to investigate whether the mutagenesis by formaldehyde can contribute to microsatellite instability. We observed that exposure of Escherichia coli to 2.5 mM formaldehyde increased the frequency of expansions and deletions of the dinucleotide repetitive sequences. After being induced by formaldehyde, the microsatellite mutation frequencies of (GpT)n and (ApC)n were 2- to 24-fold higher than those in the control. Although complementary to each other, (ApC)n and (GpT)n had different mutation frequencies when they were on the leading strand: mutation frequencies of (GpT)n were 13- to 24-fold higher than the control group, whereas frequencies of (ApC)n were only 2- to 3-fold higher the control group. Sequencing of the repetitive and flanking sequences in mutant clones showed that all mutants displayed expansions or deletions of dinucleotide repeats. These results clearly suggest that formaldehyde can increase micrsosatellite instability by affecting the fidelity of microsatellite maintenance. We presumed that a mutagenic mechanism of formaldehyde and the temporal formation of left-handed helix Z-DNA might be related to the microsatellite instability.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +86 28 85412488; Fax: +86 28 85414886; Email: fundzou{at}scu.edu.cn

Received on January 7, 2007; revised on April 30, 2007; accepted on May 17, 2007.


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