Hydrolytic editing, is the polymerase backtracks by one or more nucleotides and cleaves the RNA product, removing the error-containing sequence.

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#Unit 3. Fundamental Processes

Mutations that alter a single nucleotide are called point mutations.

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#Unit 3. Fundamental Processes

Chemical mutagens can be divided into two groups:

those that are mutagenic to both replicating and nonreplicating DNA, such as the alkylating agents and nitrous acid; and 

those that are mutagenic only to replicating DNA, such as base analogs— purines and pyrimidines with structures similar to the normal bases in DNA.

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#Unit 3. Fundamental Processes

The most frequent and important kind of hydrolytic damage is deamination of the base cytosine.

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#Unit 3. Fundamental Processes

Adenine and guanine are also subject to spontaneous deamination. Deamination converts adenine to hypoxanthine, which hydrogen-bonds to cytosine rather than to thymine; guanine is converted to xanthine,

which continues to pair with cytosine, although with only two hydrogen bonds.

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DNA also undergoes depurination by spontaneous hydrolysis of the N-glycosyl linkage, and this produces an abasic site (i.e., deoxyribose lacking a base) in the DNA.

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#Unit 3. Fundamental Processes

Common types of hydrolytic DNA damage.

Deamination of cytosine creates uracil

Depurination of guanine by hydrolysis creates apurinic deoxyribose

Deamination of 5-methylcytosine generates a natural base in DNA, thymine