Mutagenicity and mutation spectra of 2-acetylaminofluorene at frameshift and base-substitution alleles in four DNA repair backgrounds of Salmonella.

We used colony probe hybridization procedures to determine the mutations in approximately 600 revertants of the -1 frameshift allele hisD3052 and approximately 200 revertants of the base-substitution allele hisG46 of Salmonella typhimurium induced by 2-acetylaminofluorene (2-AAF) in the presence of Aroclor-induced rat liver S9. 2-AAF was primarily a frameshift mutagen, exhibiting 5 times more frameshift than base-substitution activity. The only frameshift mutation 2-AAF induced at the hisD3052 allele was a hotspot (-2) deletion within the sequence CGCGCGCG. The addition of the pKM101 plasmid had a small effect on the mutagenic potency of 2-AAF at this allele in a uvr+ background and no effect on the mutation spectra in either a uvr+ or uvr- background. The small amount of base-substitution activity exhibited by 2-AAF at the hisG46 allele required the presence of both the pKM101 plasmid and the uvrB mutation. The base substitutions were G.C-->T.A transversions (86%) and G.C-->A.T transitions (14%), and 85% of the substitutions were at the second position of the CCC target of the hisG46 allele; the remainder were at the first position. We propose that the hotspot frameshift may be initiated by N-acetyl-2-aminofluorene adducts located at the C(8) position of any of the guanines except the first one in the CGCGCGCG hotspot sequence. The mutation might then result from correct incorporation of cytosine opposite the adducted guanine, followed by a 2-base slippage according to our recently proposed correct-incorporation/slippage model. The hotspot mutation may also result from a 2-AAF-induced B- to Z-DNA transition at the repeating GpC site as well as by the action of enzymes involved in DNA metabolism, such as DNA resolvases or topoisomerases, on DNA structures that have been distorted by 2-AAF adducts. The small amount of 2-AAF-induced base-substitution activity may be due to mispairing of adenine opposite the minor aminofluorene adduct at the C(8) position of guanine.