Petasiphenol, a bio-antimutagen isolated from a Japanese vegetable, Petasites japonicus, selectively inhibits the activities of mammalian DNA polymerase lambda (pol lambda) in vitro. The compound did not influence the activities of replicative DNA polymerases such as alpha, delta, and epsilon but also showed no effect even on the pol beta activity, the three-dimensional structure of which is thought to be highly similar to pol lambda. The inhibitory effect of petasiphenol on intact pol lambda including the BRCA1 C-terminus (BRCT) domain was dose-dependent, and 50% inhibition was observed at a concentration of 7.8 microM. The petasiphenol-induced inhibition of the pol lambda activity was noncompetitive with respect to both the DNA template-primer and the dNTP substrate. Petasiphenol did not only inhibit the activity of the truncated pol lambda including the pol beta-like core, in which the BRCT motif was deleted in its N-terminal region. BIAcore analysis demonstrated that petasiphenol bound selectively to the N-terminal domain of pol lambda but did not bind to the C-terminal region. On the basis of these results, the pol lambda inhibitory mechanism of petasiphenol is discussed.