Bacillus subtilis RNase HII is inefficient at processing guanosine monophosphate and damaged ribonucleotides

During one round of DNA replication, nearly 2,000 ribonucleoside monophosphates (rNMPs) are incorporated in place of their cognate deoxyribonucleoside monophosphate (dNMP). Given their high rate of insertion, genomic DNA would contain rNMPs that are damaged or mismatched. Here, we tested the activity of Bacillus subtilis and Escherichia coli RNase HII on all four canonical, mismatched, and damaged rNMPs. We show that E. coli RNase HII is adept at incising most rNMP variants from DNA at similar frequencies, with the exception of an oxidized rNMP, where endoribonuclease activity is sharply reduced. In contrast, B. subtilis RNase HII efficiently incised rAMP, rCMP, and rUMP, but was inefficient at processing rGMP in both a canonical and mismatched base pair. We tested damaged ribonucleotides and found that B. subtilis RNase HII is refractory to processing abasic and oxidized ribonucleotide lesions. Our work shows that bacterial RNase HII enzymes have different intrinsic endoribonuclease activity toward the repair of canonical, mismatched, and damaged rNMPs, demonstrating that not all rNMP errors provoke efficient resolution. Our finding that B. subtilis RNase HII is recalcitrant to repairing damaged rNMPs resembles what is observed for eukaryotic RNase H2 orthologs, suggesting that other repair processes are necessary to resolve damaged rNMPs.