A Simple, Rapid, and Quantitative Assay to Measure Repair of DNA-protein Crosslinks on Plasmids Transfected into Mammalian Cells

The goal of this protocol is to quantify the repair of defined DNA-protein crosslinks on plasmid DNA. Lesioned plasmids are transfected into recipient mammalian cell lines and low-molecular weight harvested at multiple time points post-transfection. DNA repair kinetics are quantified using strand-specific primer extension followed by qPCR.