APOBEC3A/B-induced mutagenesis is responsible for 20% of heritable mutations in the TpCpW context.

APOBEC3A/B cytidine deaminase is responsible for the majority of cancerous mutations in a large fraction of cancer samples. However, its role in heritable mutagenesis remains very poorly understood. Recent studies have demonstrated that both in yeast and in human cancerous cells, most APOBEC3A/B-induced mutations occur on the lagging strand during replication and on the nontemplate strand of transcribed regions. Here, we use data on rare human polymorphisms, interspecies divergence, and de novo mutations to study germline mutagenesis and to analyze mutations at nucleotide contexts prone to attack by APOBEC3A/B. We show that such mutations occur preferentially on the lagging strand and on nontemplate strands of transcribed regions. Moreover, we demonstrate that APOBEC3A/B-like mutations tend to produce strand-coordinated clusters, which are also biased toward the lagging strand. Finally, we show that the mutation rate is increased 3' of C→G mutations to a greater extent than 3' of C→T mutations, suggesting pervasive trans-lesion bypass of the APOBEC3A/B-induced damage. Our study demonstrates that 20% of C→T and C→G mutations in the TpCpW context-where W denotes A or T, segregating as polymorphisms in human population-or 1.4% of all heritable mutations are attributable to APOBEC3A/B activity.