Eukaryotic cells are constantly subjected to oxidative stress leading to a tremendous number of insults, which have to be efficiently repaired. In the DNA, 8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanine (8-oxoG) is one of the major lesions induced upon oxidative stress. 8-oxoG is repaired by the Base Excision Repair (BER) pathway (
1). BER uses a limited number of enzymes and how BER functions on naked DNA template is well characterized. 8-oxoG is recognized and removed by the enzyme 8-oxoguanine DNA glycosylase (OGG1), which exhibits both a glycosylase and an apurinic/apyrimidinic (AP) lyase activity (
2,
3). After 8-oxoG removal OGG1 nicks DNA at the site of the lesion and then the endonuclease (APE1) creates a free 3′-hydroxyl at the site of the nick. The resulting gap in DNA is further filled by polymerase β and the nick is finally ligated by DNA ligase III [reviewed in (
4)].
In eukaryotic cells, DNA is organized into chromatin. Chromatin exhibits a complex organization. The first level of chromatin organization is the nucleosome, which consists of an octamer of core histones (two of each H2A, H2B, H3 and H4) around which ~147

bp of DNA are wrapped into two left superhelical turns (
5). Under physiological conditions the nucleosome forms a rather stable structure (
6). Distinct nucleosomes, connected by linker DNA, form the 10-nm chromatin filament (
5). The 30-nm chromatin fibre is generated at higher ionic strength upon interaction of the 10-nm chromatin filament with the linker histone H1 (
7,
8). The available data show that the globular domain of histone H1 binds to both the DNA minor groove located at the centre of the nucleosome and ~20-bp DNA at the entry/exit of the nucleosome (
9–11). The C-terminal domain of histone H1 (
11,
12) as well as the N-terminal tail of core histone H3 (
13) interacts with the nucleosome linkers which leads to the formation of the stem structure, where the two linkers are brought in close vicinity to each other. The linker histones and the N-termini of the core histones as well as their post-translational modifications play a crucial role in the condensation and spatial organization of both the chromatin fibre and the mitotic chromosomes (
14–16).
How BER functions on chromatinized templates is far from being clear. The different enzymes involved in BER appeared to act in distinct manners on nucleosomes. In general, the presence of nucleosomes strongly interferes with BER (
17–22). For example, uracil DNA glycosylase (UDG) showed a strong reduction (down to 30 times) in accessibility in nucleosomal DNA (
17–19). In addition, the UDG efficiency appeared to depend strongly on the rotational positioning of the inserted uracil within the nucleosomal DNA (
22,
23), i.e. when the uracil faces the solution it is removed as easily as in free DNA, while the removal of uracil facing histone octamer is inhibited by more than three orders of magnitude. The activities of OGG1, APE1 and polymerase β were strongly reduced for an 8-oxoG located near the dyad of strongly positioned nucleosomes and remodelling by SWI/SNF was required for efficient repair (
24). In contrast, both the FLAP endonuclease (FEN1) and DNA ligase I were reported to have similar activities on both naked DNA and nucleosomally organized DNA (
25,
26).
In this work we have analysed how the BER-initiating enzyme OGG1 triggers repair of 8-oxoG in histone H1 assembled dinucleosomal templates. A single 8-oxoG was inserted either in the linker or within the core particle DNA. The data show that only the removal of histone H1 is required for efficient linker 8-oxoG repair, while both H1 removal and nucleosome remodelling are required for repair of nucleosomal 8-oxoG.