The bacterial stress response polymerase DinB tolerates sugar modifications and preferentially incorporates arabinosyl nucleotides

The bacterial DNA damage (SOS) response promotes DNA repair, DNA damage tolerance, and survival in the setting of genotoxic stress, including stress induced by antibiotics. In <i>E. coli</i>, translesion DNA synthesis can be fulfilled by Y-family DNA polymerases, including DNA polymerase IV (DinB). DinB features a more open active site and lacks proofreading ability, promoting error-prone replication. While DinB is known to tolerate damaged nucleobases like 8-oxo-guanine (8-oxoG), its ability to accommodate sugar-modified nucleotides has been underexplored, a question of importance given that such analogs are commonly used to inhibit viral and other polymerases. To explore DinB's selectivity, we screened a variety of sugar-modified noncanonical nucleotide triphosphates (nNTPs) and determined that DinB is intolerant of most 3'-modifications but can incorporate a subset of 2'-modifications. In particular, arabinosyl nucleotide triphosphates (araNTPs) showed efficient incorporation and limited extension. Furthermore, araNTPs can effectively compete with natural nucleotide triphosphates leading to stalled replication by DinB. We show that this tolerance extends to combined nucleobase and sugar modifications, with preferred misincorporation of 2'-fluoroarabinosyl-8-oxo-GTP opposite A more than C. Overall, our work highlights the potential for exploiting substrate promiscuity to target DinB and, thereby, slow bacterial adaptation to antibiotics.