Important role of the nucleotide excision repair pathway in Mycobacterium smegmatis in conferring protection against commonly encountered DNA-damaging agents

• DOI: 10.1099/mic.0.2008/019638-0
• Publication Date: 2008-08-30T01:46:31Z
• Authors: Krishna Kurthkoti; Pradeep Kumar; Ruchi Jain; Umesh Varshney
• Keywords: Mycobacterium smegmatis

Mycobacteria are an important group of human pathogens. Although the DNA repair mechanisms in mycobacteria not well understood, these vital for pathogen's persistence host macrophages. In this study, we generated a null mutation uvrB gene Mycobacterium smegmatis to allow us compare significance nucleotide excision (NER) pathway with two base pathways, initiated by uracil glycosylase (Ung) and formamidopyrimidine (Fpg or MutM), isogenic strain background. The deficient NER was most sensitive commonly encountered DNA-damaging agents such as UV, low pH, reactive oxygen species, hypoxia, also acidified nitrite. Taken together previous observations on NER-deficient M. tuberculosis, results suggest that is mycobacteria.