Proliferating cell nuclear antigen facilitates excision in long-patch base excision repair.

There are two distinct pathways for the removal of modified DNA bases through base excision repair (BER) in vertebrates. Following 5' incision by AP endonuclease, the pathways diverge as two different excision mechanisms are possible. In short-patch repair, DNA polymerase beta accounts for both excision activity and single nucleotide repair synthesis. In long-patch repair, the damage-containing strand is excised by the structure-specific endonuclease FEN-1 and approximately 2-8 nucleotides are incorporated by proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA)-dependent synthesis. PCNA is an accessory factor of DNA polymerases delta and epsilon that is required for DNA replication and repair. PCNA binds to FEN-1 and stimulates its nuclease activity, but the physiological significance of this interaction is unknown. The importance of the PCNA-FEN-1 interaction in BER was investigated. In a reconstituted BER assay system containing FEN-1, omission of PCNA caused the accumulation of pre-excision reaction intermediates which could be converted to completely repaired product by addition of PCNA. When dNTPs were omitted from the reaction to suppress repair synthesis, PCNA was required for the formation of excised reaction intermediates. In contrast, a PCNA mutant that could not bind to FEN-1 was unable to stimulate excision. To further study this effect, a mutant of FEN-1 was identified that retained full nuclease activity but was specifically defective in binding to PCNA. The mutant FEN-1 exhibited one-tenth the specific activity of wild type FEN-1 in the reconstituted BER assay, and this repair defect was due to a kinetic block at the excision step as evidenced by the accumulation of pre-excision intermediates when dNTPs were omitted. These results indicate that PCNA facilitates excision during long-patch BER through its interaction with FEN-1.