Its most important function is to prevent mutagenesis by eliminating uracil from DNA molecules by cleaving the N-glycosidic bond and initiating the base-excision repair (BER) pathway.

[5] One important function of uracil-DNA glycosylases is to prevent mutagenesis by eliminating uracil from DNA molecules by cleaving the N-glycosidic bond and initiating the base-excision repair (BER) pathway.

[7] UDG excises uracil in both AU and GU pairs to prevent propagation of the base mismatch to downstream transcription and translation processes.

[10] Pinch: UDG scans DNA for uracil by nonspecifically binding to the strand and creating a kink in the backbone, thereby positioning the selected base for detection.

[10] The coupling of intercalation and eversion helps compensate for the disruption of favorable base stacking interactions within the DNA helix.

Leu272 fills the void left by the flipped nucleotide to create dispersion interactions with neighboring bases and restore stacking stability.

Purines are too large to fit in the active site, while unfavorable interactions with other pyrimidines discourage binding alternative substrates.

However carry-over contamination can be controlled by the following two steps: (i) incorporating dUTP in all PCR products (by substituting dUTP for dTTP, or by incorporating uracil during synthesis of primers; and (ii) treating all subsequent fully preassembled starting reactions with uracil DNA glycosylase (UDG), followed by thermal inactivation of UDG.

[6] Uracil N-glycosylase was also used in a study to detect evidence of ongoing low-level metabolic activity and DNA repair in ancient bacteria.