Hydrogen peroxide is an important reactive oxygen species (ROS) that arises either during the aerobic respiration process or as a by-product of water radiolysis after exposure to ionizing radiation. The reaction of hydrogen peroxide with transition metals imposes on cells an oxidative stress condition that can result in damage to cell components such as proteins, lipids and principally to DNA, leading to mutagenesis and cell death. Escherichia coli cells are able to deal with these adverse events via DNA repair mechanisms, which enable them to recover their genome integrity. These include base excision repair (BER), nucleotide excision repair (NER) and recombinational repair. Other important defense mechanisms present in Escherichia coli are OxyR and SosRS anti-oxidant inducible pathways, which are elicited by cells to avoid the introduction of oxidative lesions by hydrogen peroxide. This review summarizes the phenomena of lethal synergism between UV irradiation (254 nm) and H 2 O 2 , the cross-adaptive response between different classes of genotoxic agents and hydrogen peroxide, and the role of copper ions in the lethal response to H 2 O 2 under low-iron conditions. Key words: hydrogen peroxide, cross-adaptive response, lethal synergism, copper and iron.
General AspectsThe appearance of aerobic forms of life was an important step in the evolutionary process, since oxygen consumption leads to the production of ten-fold more energy from glucose than does anaerobic metabolism (Meneghini, 1987). However, this process imposes constraints on cell viability, because of the generation of reactive oxygen species during respiration.The consecutive univalent reduction of molecular oxygen to water produces three active intermediates: superoxide anion (O 2 -• ), hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) and hydroxyl radical (OH • ). These intermediates, collectively referred to as reactive oxygen species (ROS) are potent oxidants of lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids (Halliwell and Gutteridge, 1984;Mello-Filho and Meneghini, 1985;Meneghini, 1988). Among the oxidative DNA lesions, one of the major classes of DNA damage leads to modification in purine and pyrimidine bases, together with oligonucleotide strand breaks, DNA-protein cross-links and abasic sites. Increasing evidence suggests that the cumulative damage caused by ROS contributes to numerous degenerative diseases associated with aging, such as atherosclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and cancer (Ames et al., 1993;Halliwell and Gutteridge, 1999).Living organisms have developed specific mechanisms to prevent the production and effects of ROS. The reduction of O 2 by cytochrome oxidase without yielding ROS, the superoxide dismutase catalysis of O 2 -• into H 2 O 2 through a dismutation reaction, the decomposition of H 2 O 2 by catalase and peroxidases, and the scavenging of ROS by some vitamins comprise part of the set of cellular antioxidant defenses (Halliwell and Gutteridge, 1999). Synthesis of the enzymes that catalyze these reactions is a part of the adaptive response tr...
