Abstract

Survival of wild-type and four radiation-sensitive (rad) mutants of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans was determined after near-UV irradiation in the presence of 8-methoxypsoralen (8-MOP). Three sets of inactivation profiles were generated for each strain by irradiating synchronous populations of either early embryos, late embryos or first-stage larvae (L1s). Late embryos were consistently the most sensitive. Curiously, none of the four rad mutants were even moderately hypersensitive. Split-dose experiments indicated that DNA-DNA crosslinks were primarily responsible for lethality. Crosslink induction and repair were determined using two different assays. In both cases, little if any repair was observed in wild-type. This lack of repair thus explains why the rad mutants were not hypersensitive to 8-MOP photoinactivation. Since early embryos undergo extensive cell cycling, their resistance to 8-MOP photoinactivation suggests that replication is highly refractory to both monoadducts and crosslinks, as has been demonstrated previously for UV radiation-induced photoproducts (Hartman et al., 1991, Mutat. Res., 255, pp. 163-173).