Defective flap endonuclease 1 activity in mammalian cells is associated with impaired DNA repair and prolonged S phase delay.

Flap endonuclease 1 (FEN-1) is a 5'-3' flap exo-/endonuclease that plays an important role in Okazaki fragment maturation, nonhomologous end joining of double-stranded DNA breaks, and long patch base excision repair. Here, we demonstrate that the wild type FEN-1 binds tightly to chromatin in conjunction with proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) recruitment after MMS treatment, and the nuclease-defective FEN-1 increased the sensitivity of the cells to methylmethane sulfonate (MMS) and to UV light but not to ionizing radiation. In contrast, the cells expressing the nuclease-defective and PCNA binding-defective double mutant FEN-1 exhibited sensitivities similar to those in the cells expressing the wild type FEN-1. MMS treatment caused a prolonged delay of S phase progression and impairment in colony-forming activity of cells expressing nuclease-defective FEN-1. A comet assay demonstrated that DNA repair after MMS or UV treatment was impaired in the cells expressing nuclease-deficient FEN-1 but not in the cells with double-mutated FEN-1. Taken together, these findings suggest that FEN-1 plays an essential role in the DNA repair processes in mammalian cells and that this activity of FEN-1 is PCNA-dependent.