Hydrazine-mediated DNA damage: role of hemoprotein, electron transport, and organic free radicals.

The hydrazines represent an important class of xenobiotic agents encountered in the environment, in industrial settings, and in medical therapeutics. Agents with a hydrazine functionality are metabolized to toxic intermediates capable of damaging cellular macromolecules and stimulating proteolysis. Phenylhydrazine (PH), methylhydrazine (MH), hydrazine (HY), and the therapeutic agents phenelzine (PZ) and hydralazine (HD) were examined for their ability to undergo metabolism via HbO2 and to cause damage to added supercoiled phi x174 RF DNA. The hydrazines, when incubated in hemolysate, caused a time- and concentration-dependent strand scission of DNA as monitored using phi x174 RF DNA. The rank order for hydrazine-mediated damage was phenylhydrazine > phenelzine > hydrazine > hydralazine > methylhydrazine. In addition, hydrazine-mediated damage to DNA increased in proportion to protein concentration (i.e., HbO2 content) of the hemolysate. To examine whether the DNA damage resulted primarily from organic free radicals or reactive oxygen free radical species, a series of mechanistic studies employing antioxidants and a free radical scavenger was initiated. The antioxidants dimethylfuran, dimethyl sulfoxide, and dimethylthiourea failed to inhibit hydrazine-mediated DNA damage in hemolysate. In contrast, the free radical spin trap agent dimethylpyrrolidin-N-oxide effectively inhibited PH-mediated DNA damage, while the free radical scavenger N-acetylcysteine also showed a protective effect against PH-, PZ-, HD-, HY-, and MH-mediated DNA strand scission. Potassium ferricyanide-mediated methemoglobin formation and imidazole, a ligand for the heme moiety of hemoglobin, both inhibited PH-stimulated DNA damage in hemolysate demonstrating the importance of oxyhemoglobin to the process. These results suggest that organic free radicals play a dominant role, relative to oxygen free radical species, in hydrazine-mediated DNA strand scission.