UV-induced de novo protein synthesis enhances nucleotide excision repair efficiency in a transcription-dependent manner in S. cerevisiae

DNA damage results in the up-regulation of several genes involved in different cellular physiological processes, such as the nucleotide excision repair (NER) mechanism that copes with a broad range of DNA alterations, including the carcinogenic ultraviolet (UV) light-induced pyrimidine dimers (PDs). There are two NER sub-pathways: transcription coupled repair (TCR) that is specific for the transcribed strands (TS) of active genes and global genomic repair (GGR) that repairs non-transcribed DNA sequences (NTD) and the non-transcribed strands (NTS) of expressed genes. To elucidate the role of UV-dependent de novo protein synthesis in nucleotide excision repair in the budding yeast, we investigated the effect of the protein synthesis inhibitor, cycloheximide, on the removal of PDs. Log phase as well as G 1-synchronized cells were treated with the drug shortly before UV irradiation and immediately thereafter, and the repair of damaged DNA was assessed with the high resolution primer extension technique. The results show that in both cellular conditions, the inhibition of UV-dependent de novo protein synthesis by cycloheximide impairs the excision repair of the transcriptionally active GAL10 and URA3 genes, with a greater effect on the non-transcribed strands. This indicates that UV-mediated de novo protein synthesis is required for efficient nucleotide excision repair, but not for the preferential repair of the TSs. On the other hand, cycloheximide did not affect the repair of either strand of the repressed GAL10 gene or the non-transcribed promoter region of the URA3 gene, showing that UV-induced de novo protein synthesis is not required for PD removal from transcriptionally inactive DNA sequences. Together, these data show that despite the fact that NTD and NTSs are normally repaired by the GGR sub-pathway, their requirement for UV-dependent de novo protein synthesis is different, which may suggest a difference in the processing of UV lesions in these non-transcribed sequences of the genome.