Alkaline unwinding flow cytometry assay to measure nucleotide excision repair

Nucleotide excision repair (NER), one of the DNA repair pathways, is the primary mechanism for repair of bulky adducts caused by physical and chemical agents, such as UV radiation, cisplatin and 4-nitroquinolones. Variations in DNA repair may be a significant risk factor for several cancers, but its measurement in epidemiological studies has been hindered by the high variability, complexity and laborious nature of currently available assays. An alkaline unwinding flow cytometric assay using UV-C radiation as a DNA-damaging agent was adapted for measurement of NER-mediated breaks. This assay was based on the principle of alkaline unwinding of strand breaks in double-stranded DNA to yield single-stranded DNA with the number of strand breaks being proportional to the amount of DNA damage. This assay measured 50 000 events per sample with several samples being analyzed per specimen, thereby providing very reliable measurements, which can be performed on a large-scale basis. Using area under the curve (AUC) to quantitate amount of NER-mediated breaks, this assay was able to detect increased NER-mediated breaks with increasing doses of UV-C radiation. The assay detected NER-mediated breaks in lymphocytes from normal donors and not in xeroderma pigmentosum lymphoblastoid cell lines indicating specificity for the detection of NER-mediated breaks. The assay measured NER-mediated breaks within G₁, S and G₂/M phases of the cell cycle; thereby decreasing variability in measurements of NER-mediated breaks due to differences in cell cycle phases. Intraindividual variability for AUC after 120 min of repair was 15% with interindividual variability being ∼43% for cells in the G₁ phase, indicating substantial between-subject variation and relatively low within-subject variation. Thus, the alkaline unwinding flow cytometry-based assay provides a high-throughput method for the specific measurement of NER-mediated breaks in lymphocytes.