Histones participate in base excision repair of 8-oxodGuo by transiently cross-linking with active repair intermediates in nucleosome core particles.

8-Oxo-7,8-dihydro-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-oxodGuo) is a biomarker of oxidative DNA damage and can be repaired by hOGG1 and APE1 via the base excision repair (BER) pathway. In this work, we studied coordinated BER of 8-oxodGuo by hOGG1 and APE1 in nucleosome core particles and found that histones transiently formed DNA-protein cross-links (DPCs) with active repair intermediates such as 3'-phospho-α,β-unsaturated aldehyde (PUA) and 5'-deoxyribosephosphate (dRP). The effects of histone participation could be beneficial or deleterious to the BER process, depending on the circumstances. In the absence of APE1, histones enhanced the AP lyase activity of hOGG1 by cross-linking with 3'-PUA. However, the formed histone-PUA DPCs hampered the subsequent repair process. In the presence of APE1, both the AP lyase activity of hOGG1 and the formation of histone-PUA DPCs were suppressed. In this case, histones could catalyse removal of the 5'-dRP by transiently cross-linking with the active intermediate. That is, histones promoted the repair by acting as 5'-dRP lyases. Our findings demonstrate that histones participate in multiple steps of 8-oxodGuo repair in nucleosome core particles, highlighting the diverse roles that histones may play during DNA repair in eukaryotic cells.