Mutagenic and Cytotoxic Properties of Oxidation Products of 5-Methylcytosine Revealed by Next-Generation Sequencing

5-methylcytosine (5-mC) can be sequentially oxidized to 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5-hmC), 5-formylcytosine (5-foC), and finally to 5-carboxylcytosine (5-caC), which is thought to function in active DNA cytosine demethylation in mammals. Although the roles of 5-mC in epigenetic regulation of gene expression are well established, the effects of 5-hmC, 5-foC and 5-caC on DNA replication remain unclear. Here we report a systematic study on how these cytosine derivatives (5-hmC, 5-foC and 5-caC) perturb the efficiency and accuracy of DNA replication using shuttle vector technology in conjugation with next-g sequencing. Our results demonstrated that, in Escherichia coli cells, all the cytosine derivatives could induce CT transition mutation at frequencies of 0.17%–1.12%, though no effect on replication efficiency was observed. These findings provide an important new insight on the potential mutagenic properties of cytosine derivatives occurring as the intermediates of DNA demethylation.