DNA damage and base excision repair (BER) are actively involved in the modulation of DNA methylation and demethylation. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, we seek to understand the mechanisms by exploring the effects of oxidative DNA damage on the DNA methylation pattern of the tumor suppressor breast cancer 1 (BRCA1) gene in the human embryonic kidney (HEK) HEK293H cells. We found that oxidative DNA damage simultaneously induced DNA demethylation and generation of new methylation sites at the CpGs located at the promoter and transcribed regions of the gene ranging from −189 to +27 in human cells. We demonstrated that DNA damage-induced demethylation was mediated by nucleotide misincorporation by DNA polymerase β (pol β). Surprisingly, we found that the generation of new DNA methylation sites was mediated by coordination between pol β and the de novo DNA methyltransferase, DNA methyltransferase 3b (DNMT3b), through the interaction between the two enzymes in the promoter and encoding regions of the BRCA1 gene. Our study provides the first evidence that oxidative DNA damage can cause dynamic changes in DNA methylation in the BRCA1 gene through the crosstalk between BER and de novo DNA methylation.

DNA damage can cause genome instability, which may lead to human cancer. The most common form of DNA damage is DNA base damage, which is efficiently repaired by DNA base excision repair (BER). Thus BER is the major DNA repair pathway that maintains the stability of the genome. On the other hand, BER mediates DNA demethylation that can occur on the promoter region of important tumor suppressor genes such as Breast Cancer 1 (BRCA1) gene that is also involved in prevention and development of cancer. In this study, employing cell-based and in vitro biochemical approaches along with bisulfite DNA sequencing, we initially discovered that an oxidized nucleotide, 5’,2-cyclo-2-deoxyadenosine in DNA duplex can either cause misinsertion by DNA polymerase β (pol β) during pol β-mediated BER or inhibit lesion bypass of pol β resulting in DNA strand breaks. We then explored how a T/G mismatch resulting from active DNA demethylation can affect genome integrity during BER and found that pol β can extend the mismatched T to cause mutation. We found that AP endonuclease 1 (APE1) can use its 3'-5' exonuclease to remove the mismatched T before pol β can extend the nucleotide preventing a C to T mutation. The results demonstrate that the 3'-5' exonuclease activity of APE1 can serve as a proofreader for pol β to prevent mutation. We further explored the effects of exposure of environmental toxicants, bromate and chromate on the DNA methylation pattern on the promoter region of BRCA1 gene with bisulfite DNA sequencing. We found that bromate and chromate induced demethylation of 5-methylcytosines (5mC) at the CpG sites as well as created additional methylation at several unmethylated CpG sites at BRCA1 gene in human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cells. We further demonstrated that the demethylation was mediated by pol β nucleotide misinsertion and an interaction between pol β and DNA methyltransferase 1 (DNMT1) suggesting a cross-talk between BER and DNA methyltransferases. We suggest that DNA base damage and BER govern the interactions among the environment, the genome and epigenome, modulating the stability of the genome and epigenome and disease development.