Designs of experiments. The study was aimed to address the effect of arsenite on repair of BPDE-DNA adducts and its resulting mutagenesis in the three human lung
cell-lines with different p53 status. Briefly, the plasmids, pSP189 and pGL2, were used to evaluate the BPDE-induced gene mutation rates and the repair of BPDE-DNA adducts,
respectively. The plasmid DNA was in vitro modified with BPDE to form BPDE-DNA adducts and then the BPDE-modified DNA was transfected into the lung cell-lines, A549,
H1299, and WI38-VA13, for the following arsenite treatments. The supF mutagenesis assay employs the shuttle vector pSP189, which carries a supF gene as the mutation
target, to evaluate the arsenite effect on the BPDE-induced mutagenesis. The host cell reactivation assay employs the vector pGL2, which carries a luciferase reporter gene, to
determine the arsenic effect on repair of the BPDE-DNA adducts.