Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: EC:2.7.7.6 (RNA polymerase)
 34,946 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Some types of damage to cellular DNA have been shown to interfere with the essential transactions of replication and transcription. Not only may the translocation of the polymerase be arrested at the site of the lesion but the bound protein may encumber recognition of the lesion by repair enzymes. In the case of transcription a subpathway of excision repair, termed transcription-coupled repair (TCR) has been shown to operate on lesions in the transcribed strands of expressed genes in bacteria, yeast, mammalian cells and a number of other organisms. Certain genes in mammalian cells (e.g., CSA and CSB) have been uniquely implicated in TCR while others (e.g., XPC-HR23 and XPE) have been shown to operate in the global genomic pathway of nucleotide excision repair, but not in TCR. In order to understand the mechanism of TCR it is important to learn how an RNA polymerase elongation complex interacts with a damaged DNA template. That relationship is explored for different lesions and different RNA polymerase systems in this article.
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PMID:Effect of DNA lesions on transcription elongation. 1021 18

The most versatile cellular pathway for dealing with a large variety of structurally-unrelated DNA alterations is nucleotide excision repair (NER). Most genomic damage, if not repaired, may contribute to mutagenesis and carcinogenesis, as well as to cellular lethality. There are two subpathways of NER, termed global genomic repair (GGR) and transcription-coupled repair (TCR); While GGR deals with all repairable lesions throughout the genome, TCR is selective for the transcribed DNA strand in expressed genes. Proteins involved in the initial recognition of lesions for GGR as well as for TCR (i.e. RNA polymerase) may sometimes initiate gratuitous repair events in undamaged DNA. However, the damage recognition enzymes for GGR are normally maintained at very low levels unless the cells are genomically stressed. Following UV irradiation in human fibroblasts the efficiency of GGR is upregulated through activation of the p53 tumor suppressor gene. The transactivation role of p53 includes control of expression of the genes, XPC and XPE, which are implicated in GGR but not TCR. These inducible responses are essential for the efficient repair of the most prominent lesion produced by UV, the cyclobutane pyrimidine dimer (CPD). They are also clinically relevant, as we have shown them to operate upon chemical carcinogen DNA damage at levels to which humans are environmentally exposed (e.g. through smoking). Thus, for benzo(a)pyrene (at 10-50 adducts per 10(8) nucleotides) repair was essentially complete within 1 day in p53(+/+) human fibroblasts while no repair was detected within 3 days in p53(-/-) cells. The levels of all four DNA adducts formed by benzo(g)chrysene, also exhibited p53-dependent control in human fibroblasts. However, unlike humans most rodent tissues are deficient in the p53-dependent GGR pathway. Since rodents are used as surrogates for humans in environmental cancer risk assessment it is very important that we determine how they differ from humans with respect to DNA repair and oncogenic responses to environmental genotoxins.
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PMID:Functional characterization of global genomic DNA repair and its implications for cancer. 1464 13

Xeroderma pigmentosum (XP), Cockayne syndrome (CS) and trichothiodystrophy (TTD) are genetic disorders with very different clinical features, but all associated with defects in nucleotide excision repair. Defects in the XPA or XPC genes confer sensitivity to UV carcinogenesis in both humans and mice, but only XPA(-/-) mice have increased acute responses to UV exposure, whereas XPC(-/-) mice are normal in this respect. Both XPE and XPF proteins have functions separate from their role in NER, but the exact nature of these functions has not yet been established. The CSA and CSB genes responsible for CS are both components of complexes associated with RNA polymerase II and their role is thought to be in assisting polII in dealing with transcription blocks. XPB and XPD proteins are components of transcription factor TFIIH, which is involved in both basal and activated transcription. XPB is part of the core of TFIIH and has a central role in transcription, whereas XPD connects the core to the CAK subcomplex, and can tolerate many different mutations. Subtle differences in the effects of these different mutations on the many activities of TFIIH and on its stability determine the clinical outcomes, which can be XP, TTD, XP with CS, XP with TTD or COFS. Features of single and double mutant mice indicate that the neurological and ageing features associated with these disorders result from the defects in NER in association with the transcriptional deficiencies. Skin tumours in XP patients have mutations characteristic of UV-induction in the ras, p53 and ptch genes, showing that sunlight-induced mutations in these genes are important in carcinogenesis in XP patients.
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PMID:DNA repair-deficient diseases, xeroderma pigmentosum, Cockayne syndrome and trichothiodystrophy. 1472 16

We have previously found that UV irradiation promotes RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) hyperphosphorylation and subsequent changes in alternative splicing (AS). We show now that UV-induced DNA damage is not only necessary but sufficient to trigger the AS response and that photolyase-mediated removal of the most abundant class of pyrimidine dimers (PDs) abrogates the global response to UV. We demonstrate that, in keratinocytes, RNAPII is the target, but not a sensor, of the signaling cascade initiated by PDs. The UV effect is enhanced by inhibition of gap-filling DNA synthesis, the last step in the nucleotide excision repair pathway (NER), and reduced by the absence of XPE, the main NER sensor of PDs. The mechanism involves activation of the protein kinase ATR that mediates the UV-induced RNAPII hyperphosphorylation. Our results define the sequence UV-PDs-NER-ATR-RNAPII-AS as a pathway linking DNA damage repair to the control of both RNAPII phosphorylation and AS regulation.
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PMID:Major Roles for Pyrimidine Dimers, Nucleotide Excision Repair, and ATR in the Alternative Splicing Response to UV Irradiation. 2832 80