Coordinateendonucleolytic 5' and 3' trimming of terminally blocked blunt DNA double-strand break ends by Artemis nuclease and DNA-dependent protein kinase

Previous work showed that, in the presence of DNA-PK, Artemis slowly trims 3'-phosphoglycolate-terminated blunt ends. To examine the trimming reaction in more detail, long internally labeled DNA substrates were treated with Artemis. In the absence of DNA-PK, Artemis catalyzed extensive 5' {yields} 3' exonucleolytic resection of double-stranded DNA. This resection required a 5'-phosphate but did not require ATP, and was accompanied by endonucleolytic cleavage of the resulting 3' overhang. In the presence of DNA-PK, Artemis-mediated trimming was more limited, was ATP-dependent, and did not require a 5'-phosphate. For a blunt end with either a 3'-phosphoglycolate or 3'-hydroxyl terminus, endonucleolytic trimming of 2-4 nucleotides from the 3'-terminal strand was accompanied by trimming of 6 nucleotides from the 5'-terminal strand. The results suggest that autophosphorylated DNA-PK suppresses the exonuclease activity of Artemis toward blunt-ended DNA, and promotes slow and limited endonucleolytic trimming of the 5'-terminal strand, resulting in short 3' overhangs that are trimmed endonucleolytically. Thus, Artemis and DNA-PK can convert terminally blocked DNA ends of diverse geometry and chemical structure to a form suitable for polymerase mediated patching and ligation, with minimal loss of terminal sequence. Such processing could account for the very small deletions often found at DNA double-strand break repair sites