Parkinson disease is characterized by a major loss (approximately 80% or more) of dopaminergic nigrostriatal neurons and by an increased turnover of neurotransmitter by surviving neurons of the nigrostriatal tract. In theory, increased turnover of dopamine should be associated with an oxidative stress derived from increased production of hydrogen peroxide. The peroxide is formed during the oxid...

Immunoglobulin (Ig) class switching is initiated by deamination of C-->U within the immunoglobulin heavy chain locus, catalyzed by activation-induced deaminase (AID). In the absence of uracil-DNA glycosylase (UNG) and the homologue of bacterial MutS (MSH)-2 mismatch recognition protein, the resultant U:G lesions are not processed into switching events but are fixed by replication allowing sites...

The efficient formation of 5-methylcytosine glycol (mCg) and its facile deamination to thymine glycol (Tg) may account for the prevalent C → T transition mutation found at methylated CpG site (mCpG) in human p53 gene, a hallmark for many types of human tumors. In this work, the hydrolytic deamination of mCg was investigated at the MP2 and B3LYP levels of theory using the 6-311G(d,p) basis set. ...

Mutation in p53 tumor suppressor gene is a hallmark of human cancers. Six major mutational hotspots in p53 contain methylated CpG (mCpG) sites, and C -->T transition is the most common mutation at these sites. It was hypothesized that the formation of 5-methylcytosine glycol induced by reactive oxygen species, its spontaneous deamination to thymine glycol and the miscoding property of the latte...