Common repair pathways acting upon U.V.- and X-ray induced damage in diploid cells of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Studies on X-ray sensitive mutants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Benathen 1973, Benathen and Beam 1977) show that the XS6, XS8 and XS9 genes are not only involved in the repair of X-ray-induced damage but also in the repair of U.V.-induced damage. Analysis of the U.V. sensitivity of multiple xs mutants indicates the participation of three repair pathways which differ from excision repair. Under conditions which can influence repair, such as plating of the U.V.-irradiated cells in the presence of caffeine, followed or not by hyperthermic incubation, the wild type strain shows a diphasic survival curve, consisting of an exponential component for low doses and a sigmoidal one for higher doses. Comparison with the survival curves obtained for the sensitive mutants suggests that the first component of the wild type survival curve corresponds to the inhibition of the XS6 and XS8 gene products while the appearance of a radio-resistant fraction in the population relies on the induction of another repair pathway. A sequential model of repair with two branching points is proposed to explain the results.