Analysis of alkylation damage formation and base excision repair at yeast transcription factor binding sites

DNA base damage arises frequently in all living cells and is an important contributor to mutations and genome instability. The main repair pathway for base damage is base excision repair (BER). How the formation and repair of base lesions are modulated by DNA-binding proteins is poorly understood. Here we used a high-throughput damage mapping method, N-methylpurine-sequencing (NMP-seq), to characterize alkylation damage distribution and BER at yeast transcription factor (TF) binding sites upon the treatment with alkylating agent methyl methanesulfonate (MMS). We found that formation of alkylation damage was mainly suppressed at the binding sites of yeat TFs Abf1 and Reb1, but individual hotspots with elevated damage formation were also observed. Furthermore, our data indicates that repair of alkyhlation damage by BER was significantly inhibited both within the TF core motif and its adajcent DNA. The modulation of damage formation and BER was caused by the TF binding, because lesion formation and repair can be restored by depletion of Abf1 or Reb1 from the nucleus. Finally, we show that repair of UV damage by nucleotide excision repair (NER) was also inhibited at the binding sites of Abf1 and Reb1. A comparision between alkylyation and UV damage repair reveals that NER was inhibited in a broader DNA region relative to BER. Thus, our analyses indicate that TF binding significantly modulates alkylation damage formation and inhibits repair by the BER pathway. The interplay between base damage formation and BER may play an important role in affecting mutation frequency in gene regulatory regions. Overall design: Yeast cells were exposed to MMS and then repaired in fresh media. Alkylation damage was mapped with NMP-seq to characterize initial damage formation immediately after MMS treatment (i.e., no repair) and remaining damage (i.e., unrepaired) at each repair time point. Analysis of initial damage and remaining damage at yeast TF binding sites reveals the impacts of TF binding on base damage formation and BER.