A Specific Oxidative Catastrophe

摘要

Three different classes of antibiotics induce bacterial cell death by the production of hy-droxyl radicals. Hydroxyl radicals are powerful oxidizing agents in living cells and will oxidize the nucleic acid base, guanine, to form 8-oxo-guanine, which is potentially mutagenic because it can pair with both cytosine and adenine and form lethal double-strand DNA breaks. Foti et al. (p. 315) discovered that overproduction of the nucleotide sanitizer MutT, which hydrolyzes 8-oxo-dGTP to 8-oxo-dGMP, gives striking protection against cell death.