Background: Acrolein is highly reactive and abundant in tobacco smoke. Results: Acrolein induces DNA damage, inhibits excision repair and mismatch repair, causes repair protein degradation, and enhances mutagenesis. Conclusion: Acrolein induces DNA damage and inhibits DNA repair that causes mutagenesis and initiates carcinogenesis. Significance: This is the first demonstration that acrolein inhibits DNA repair pathways by induction of repair protein degradation.Acrolein (Acr), a ubiquitous environmental contaminant, is a human carcinogen. Acr can react with DNA to form mutagenic ␣-and ␥-hydroxy-1, N 2 -cyclic propano-2-deoxyguanosine adducts (␣-OH-Acr-dG and ␥-OH-Acr-dG). We demonstrate here that Acr-dG adducts can be efficiently repaired by the nucleotide excision repair (NER) pathway in normal human bronchial epithelia (NHBE) and lung fibroblasts (NHLF). However, the same adducts were poorly processed in cell lysates isolated from Acr-treated NHBE and NHLF, suggesting that Acr inhibits NER. In addition, we show that Acr treatment also inhibits base excision repair and mismatch repair. Although Acr does not change the expression of XPA, XPC, hOGG1, PMS2 or MLH1 genes, it causes a reduction of XPA, XPC, hOGG1, PMS2, and MLH1 proteins; this effect, however, can be neutralized by the proteasome inhibitor MG132. Acr treatment further enhances both bulky and oxidative DNA damage-induced mutagenesis. These results indicate that Acr not only damages DNA but can also modify DNA repair proteins and further causes degradation of these modified repair proteins. We propose that these two detrimental effects contribute to Acr mutagenicity and carcinogenicity.Acrolein, an ␣,-unsaturated aldehyde, is abundant in tobacco smoke, cooking fumes, and automobile exhaust fumes (1). Acr 2 is also a by-product of lipid peroxidation generated endogenously in cells under oxidative stress (2). Inhaled Acr is extremely toxic in mouse models (3). In fact, the effects of Acr on lung carcinogenicity in mouse models have not been assessed due to excessive death of Acr-exposed mice (3). Nonetheless, it has been shown that intraperitoneal injection of Acr causes bladder tumors in rat models (4 -7). Acr is a major metabolite of antitumor drugs cyclophosphamide and ifosfamide. Metabolically produced and inhaled Acr are excreted in urine and accumulated in the bladder (5, 6). It has been concluded that Acr is the culprit of bladder cancer in patients who have been administered cyclophosphamide and ifosfamide in long term treatment protocols (4 -7).Acr induces ␣-and ␥-hydroxy-1,N 2 -cyclic propano-2Ј-deoxyguanosine (␣-OH-Acr-dG and ␥-OH-Acr-dG) adducts in human cells (8). It has been found that both types of Acr-dG adducts are mutagenic and that they induce mainly G to T and G to A mutations (9 -18). By mapping Acr-dG adduct distribution at the nucleotide level in Acr-treated normal human bronchial epithelia (NHBE), we have found that the Acr-DNA binding spectrum in the p53 gene coincides with p53 mutational spectrum in lung cancer (19). Because ...