Mutagenicity of cross-links and monoadducts of furocoumarins (psoralen and angelicin) induced by 360-nm radiation in excision-repair-defective and radiation-insensitive strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

The furocoumarin psoralen can form both monoadducts and cross-links with DNA when combined with 360-nm radiation, whereas the analog angelicin can form monoadducts only. Psoralen plus 360-nm radiation causes mutation induction with a slope of 2 (log-log plot) for a radiation-insensitive strain, whereas angelicin action with 360-nm radiation displays a slope of unity. For a radiation-sensitive mutant defective in the excision-repair pathway, the actions of both angelicin and psoralen plus 360-nm radiation exhibit one-target kinetics, but at higher exposures psoralen plus 360-nm radiation assumes a slope of 2. The excision-repair-defective strain is considerably more sensitive to the furocoumarins plus 360-nm radiation than is the radiation-insensitive strain, both for killing and mutation induction. The simplest explanation for the data is that both cross-links and monoadducts, formed by furocoumarins with DNA when exposed to 360-nm radiation, are capable of inducing mutations, and that monoadducts are repaired 20 times more efficiently than cross-links by the excision-repair pathway.