Nature and. possible mechanisms of formation of potential mutations arising at emerging of thymine dimers after irradiation of double-stranded DNA by ultraviolet light

The mutagenesis under ultraviolet (UV)-irradiation is discussed. It is assumed, that the basic damages resulting in transitions, transversions, mutations of the frameshift and complex mutations are changes of the tautomeric state of the bases. The bases may be a part of dimers or may be not the dimer components. We consider such rare tautomeric states, which may influence the character of base pairing. A model of the formation of the above rare tautomeric forms of nucleotide bases under the UV-irradiation of the DNA is proposed. In the case of a radiation deexcitation of the DNA, which has absorbed the UV-quantum of the triplet energy level, there occur strong forced oscillations. They may result in changes of the lengths of hydrogen bonds between DNA bases. As a result, at H-bond shortening, the hydrogen atom may be almost in the center of H-bond. In the case of H-bond elongation, it may remain near the partner atom. Because of the H-bond breaking, during the formation of dimers, rare tautomeric forms of bases influencing the character of pairing can be realized. If a pair of the bases is not apart of dinner, then the only new stable configuration of the hydrogen atoms is the one that occurred at double-proton phototautomerism. It is shown that only those dimers are mutational, in which the change of a tautomeric state of the DNA bases have taken place. This is one of the differences between the proposed model and the standard one. The latter assumes, that from the point of view of ability of forming the mutations all the dimers are identical, and the DNA-polymerase is sometimes mistaken, incidentally building uncomplementary bases in. The consideration is only of qualitative character, it needs experimental verification, subsequent study by methods of quantum chemistry and theoretical physics. A list of problems to be studied in this respect is given. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.