Depurination of DNA as a Possible Mutagenic Pathway for Cells

The possible consequences of depurination for both spontaneous and induced mutagenesis were investigated using in vitro and in vivo assays. Depurination of synthetic polynucleotide templates such as poly[d(A-T))] or poly[d(G-C)] leads to increased misincorporation of noncomplementary nucleotides when these templates are copied by prokaryotic and eukaryotic DNA polymerases.