Publications by authors named "Dylan J Nikkel"

Human endonuclease V (EndoV) catalytically removes deaminated nucleobases by cleaving the phosphodiester bond as part of RNA metabolism. Despite being implicated in several diseases (cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and neurological disorders) and potentially being a useful tool in biotechnology, details of the human EndoV catalytic pathway remain unclear due to limited experimental information beyond a crystal structure of the apoenzyme and select mutational data. Since a mechanistic understanding is critical for further deciphering the central roles and expanding applications of human EndoV in medicine and biotechnology, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) calculations were used to unveil the atomistic details of the catalytic pathway.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Reactive oxygen species damage DNA and result in health issues. The major damage product, 8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanine (8oG), is repaired by human adenine DNA glycosylase homologue (MUTYH). Although MUTYH misfunction is associated with a genetic disorder called MUTYH-associated polyposis (MAP) and MUTYH is a potential target for cancer drugs, the catalytic mechanism required to develop disease treatments is debated in the literature.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Phosphodiester bond hydrolysis in nucleic acids is a ubiquitous reaction that can be facilitated by enzymes called nucleases, which often use metal ions to achieve catalytic function. While a two-metal-mediated pathway has been well established for many enzymes, there is growing support that some enzymes require only one metal for the catalytic step. Using human apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease (APE1) as a prototypical example and cluster models, this study clarifies the impact of DFT functional, cluster model size, and implicit solvation on single-metal-mediated phosphodiester bond cleavage and provides insight into how to efficiently model this chemistry.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Nucleases catalyze the cleavage of phosphodiester bonds in nucleic acids using a range of metal cofactors. Although it is well accepted that many nucleases rely on two metal ions, the one-metal mediated pathway is debated. Furthermore, one-metal mediated nucleases maintain activity in the presence of many different metals, but the underlying reasons for this broad metal specificity are unknown.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Methane emission from trees may partially or completely offset the methane sink in upland soils, the only process that has been regularly included in methane budgets for forest ecosystems. Our objective was to analyze multiple biogeochemical processes that influence the production, oxidation and transport of methane in a riparian cottonwood ecosystem and its adjacent river. We combined chamber flux measurements on tree stems, forest soil and the river surface with eddy covariance measurements of methane net ecosystem exchange.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Differential mutagenic patterns were recently reported for O-methylated thymine lesions, which indicate that O4-methylthymine (O4-Me-T) frequently leads to G misinsertions, whereas O2-methylthymine (O2-Me-T) is primarily nonmutagenic. The reasons for these differences are unclear since both lesions similarly alter the Watson-Crick binding face of T. To rationalize these replication outcomes at a molecular level, this work uses density functional theory calculations and molecular dynamics simulations to probe the lesion base-pairing properties as well as lesion accommodation by human polymerase η (pol η) and post-extension DNA duplexes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF