The anti-neoplastic agent, paclitaxel, causes a dose-limiting distal, symmetrical, sensory peripheral neuropathy that is often accompanied by a neuropathic pain syndrome. In a low-dose model of paclitaxel-evoked painful peripheral neuropathy in the rat, we have shown that the drug causes degeneration of intraepidermal nerve fibers (IENFs), i.e., the fibers which give rise to the sensory afferent's terminal receptor arbour. However, we did not find any evidence for axonal degeneration in samples taken at the mid-nerve level. Here we aimed to determine whether the absence of degenerating peripheral nerve axons was due to sampling a level that was too proximal. We used electron microscopy to study the distal-most branches of the nerves innervating the hind paw glabrous skin of normal and paclitaxel-treated rats. We confirmed that we sampled at a time when IENF degeneration was prominent. Because degeneration might be easier to detect with higher paclitaxel doses, we examined a four-fold cumulative dose range (8-32 mg/kg). We found no evidence of degeneration in the superficial subepidermal axon bundles (sSAB) that are located just a few microns below the epidermal basal lamina. Specifically, for all three dose groups there was no change in the number of sSAB per mm of epidermal border, no change in the number of axons per sSAB, and no change in the diameter of sSAB axons. We conclude that paclitaxel produces a novel type of lesion that is restricted to the afferent axon's terminal arbor; we name this lesion "terminal arbor degeneration (TAD)".

Prophylactic treatment with acetyl-L-carnitine (ALCAR) prevents the neuropathic pain syndrome that is evoked by the chemotherapeutic agent, paclitaxel. The paclitaxel-evoked pain syndrome is associated with degeneration of the intraepidermal terminal arbors of primary afferent neurons, with the activation of cutaneous Langerhans cells, and with an increased incidence of swollen and vacuolated axonal mitochondria in A-fibers and C-fibers. Previous work suggests that ALCAR is neuroprotective in other nerve injury models and that it improves mitochondrial dysfunction. Thus, we examined whether the prophylactic efficacy of ALCAR was associated with the prevention of intraepidermal terminal arbor degeneration, the inhibition of Langerhans cell activation, or the inhibition of swelling and vacuolation of axonal mitochondria. In animals with a confirmed ALCAR effect, we found no evidence of a neuroprotective effect on the paclitaxel-evoked degeneration of sensory terminal arbors or an inhibition of the paclitaxel-evoked activation of Langerhans cells. However, ALCAR treatment completely prevented the paclitaxel-evoked increase in the incidence of swollen and vacuolated C-fiber mitochondria, while having no effect on the paclitaxel-evoked changes in A-fiber mitochondria. Our results suggest that the efficacy of prophylactic ALCAR treatment against the paclitaxel-evoked pain may be related to a protective effect on C-fiber mitochondria.

Activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) introduces DNA cleavage in the Ig gene locus to initiate somatic hypermutation (SHM) and class switch recombination (CSR) in B cells. The DNA deamination model assumes that AID deaminates cytidine (C) on DNA and generates uridine (U), resulting in DNA cleavage after removal of U by uracil DNA glycosylase (UNG). Although UNG deficiency reduces CSR efficiency to one tenth, we reported that catalytically inactive mutants of UNG were fully proficient in CSR and that several mutants at noncatalytic sites lost CSR activity, indicating that enzymatic activity of UNG is not required for CSR. In this report we show that CSR activity by many UNG mutants critically depends on its N-terminal domain, irrespective of their enzymatic activities. Dissociation of the catalytic and CSR activity was also found in another UNG family member, SMUG1, and its mutants. We also show that Ugi, a specific peptide inhibitor of UNG, inhibits CSR without reducing DNA cleavage of the S (switch) region, confirming dispensability of UNG in DNA cleavage in CSR. It is therefore likely that UNG is involved in a repair step after DNA cleavage in CSR. Furthermore, requirement of the N terminus but not enzymatic activity of UNG mutants for CSR indicates that the UNG protein structure is critical. The present findings support our earlier proposal that CSR depends on a noncanonical function of the UNG protein (e.g., as a scaffold for repair enzymes) that might be required for the recombination reaction after DNA cleavage.N-terminal region deletion ͉ point mutants ͉ SMUG1 I n response to antigen stimulation, the Ig locus of B cells undergoes 2 types of DNA modification: class switch recombination (CSR) and somatic hypermutation (SHM) (1). CSR and SHM diversify antibodies in 2 different modes: SHM introduces point mutations in the recombined V(D)J region, whereas CSR changes the heavy-chain constant (C H ) region by looping-out deletion of upstream C H genes, which is mediated by DNA cleavage and relegation of 2 different switch (S) regions located 5Ј to each C H gene. CSR results in switching Ig isotype from IgM to IgG, IgA, or IgE, keeping the same antigen specificity but altering effector functions of the expressed antibody.AID has been shown to be essential to both CSR and SHM (2, 3), which are initiated by introducing DNA breaks in V and/or S regions (4-6). However, the molecular mechanism of DNA cleavage by AID has been a subject of controversy. The RNA editing model postulates that AID edits an unknown mRNA to generate endonuclease or its cofactor (7). On the other hand, the DNA deamination model (8-10) proposes that AID deaminates cytidine (C) to uridine (U) in S regions, generating U/G mismatches, which are recognized by the base excision or mismatch repair pathway. The majority of Us are proposed to be processed by uracil DNA glycosylase (UNG) and an apurinic/apyrimidic endonuclease, generating single-stranded nicks and staggered double-strand breaks (DSBs) in CSR.According to the DNA deamination model...

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