scholarly journals The structure-specific endonuclease complex SLX4/XPF regulates Tus/Ter-induced homologous recombination

Author(s):  
Ralph Scully ◽  
Rajula Elango ◽  
Arvind Panday ◽  
Francis Lach ◽  
Nicholas Willis ◽  
...  

Abstract Vertebrate replication forks arrested at an interstrand DNA crosslink (ICL) can engage the Fanconi anemia (FA) pathway of ICL repair. The FANCP product, SLX4, binds the FANCQ/XPF/ERCC4-ERCC1 endonuclease, which incises bidirectionally arrested forks to ‘unhook’ the ICL. The resulting double strand break (DSB) is repaired by homologous recombination (HR). Whether this mechanism operates at replication blocks other than ICLs is unknown. Here, we study the role of mammalian SLX4 in HR triggered by a site-specific, chromosomal DNA-protein replication fork barrier formed by the Escherichia coli-derived Tus/Ter complex. We identify an SLX4-XPF-mediated step that is required for Tus/Ter-induced HR but not for HR induced by a replication-independent DSB. We additionally identify a requirement for SLX4-XPF in DSB-induced ‘long tract’ gene conversion, a replicative HR pathway related to break-induced replication. Our work suggests that Tus/Ter-induced HR recapitulates the incision step of replication-coupled ICL repair, and that the full FA mechanism can process DNA-protein barriers for HR.

2009 ◽  
Vol 29 (17) ◽  
pp. 4742-4756 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Lorenz ◽  
Fekret Osman ◽  
Victoria Folkyte ◽  
Sevil Sofueva ◽  
Matthew C. Whitby

ABSTRACT Controlling the loading of Rad51 onto DNA is important for governing when and how homologous recombination is used. Here we use a combination of genetic assays and indirect immunofluorescence to show that the F-box DNA helicase (Fbh1) functions in direct opposition to the Rad52 orthologue Rad22 to curb Rad51 loading onto DNA in fission yeast. Surprisingly, this activity is unnecessary for limiting spontaneous direct-repeat recombination. Instead it appears to play an important role in preventing recombination when replication forks are blocked and/or broken. When overexpressed, Fbh1 specifically reduces replication fork block-induced recombination, as well as the number of Rad51 nuclear foci that are induced by replicative stress. These abilities are dependent on its DNA helicase/translocase activity, suggesting that Fbh1 exerts its control on recombination by acting as a Rad51 disruptase. In accord with this, overexpression of Fbh1 also suppresses the high levels of recombinant formation and Rad51 accumulation at a site-specific replication fork barrier in a strain lacking the Rad51 disruptase Srs2. Similarly overexpression of Srs2 suppresses replication fork block-induced gene conversion events in an fbh1Δ mutant, although an inability to suppress deletion events suggests that Fbh1 has a distinct functionality, which is not readily substituted by Srs2.


2007 ◽  
Vol 189 (15) ◽  
pp. 5782-5786 ◽  
Author(s):  
Estrella Guarino ◽  
Israel Salguero ◽  
Alfonso Jiménez-Sánchez ◽  
Elena C. Guzmán

ABSTRACT Stalled replication forks produced by three different ways of depleting deoxynucleoside triphosphate showed different capacities to undergo “replication fork reversal.” This reaction occurred at the stalled forks generated by hydroxyurea treatment, was impaired under thermal inactivation of ribonucleoside reductase, and did not take place under thymine starvation.


2005 ◽  
Vol 187 (8) ◽  
pp. 2903-2907 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly A. Kline ◽  
H. Steven Seifert

ABSTRACT In Escherichia coli, the Rep helicase has been implicated in replication fork progression, replication restart, homologous recombination, and DNA repair. We show that a Neisseria gonorrhoeae rep mutant is deficient in the homologous-recombination-mediated processes of DNA transformation and pilus-based colony variation but not in DNA repair.


2017 ◽  
Vol 199 (24) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingvild Flåtten ◽  
Emily Helgesen ◽  
Ida Benedikte Pedersen ◽  
Torsten Waldminghaus ◽  
Christiane Rothe ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT The Escherichia coli dnaXE145A mutation was discovered in connection with a screen for multicopy suppressors of the temperature-sensitive topoisomerase IV mutation parE10. The gene for the clamp loader subunits τ and γ, dnaX, but not the mutant dnaXE145A , was found to suppress parE10(Ts) when overexpressed. Purified mutant protein was found to be functional in vitro, and few phenotypes were found in vivo apart from problems with partitioning of DNA in rich medium. We show here that a large number of the replication forks that initiate at oriC never reach the terminus in dnaXE145A mutant cells. The SOS response was found to be induced, and a combination of the dnaXE145A mutation with recBC and recA mutations led to reduced viability. The mutant cells exhibited extensive chromosome fragmentation and degradation upon inactivation of recBC and recA, respectively. The results indicate that the dnaXE145A mutant cells suffer from broken replication forks and that these need to be repaired by homologous recombination. We suggest that the dnaX-encoded τ and γ subunits of the clamp loader, or the clamp loader complex itself, has a role in the restart of stalled replication forks without extensive homologous recombination. IMPORTANCE The E. coli clamp loader complex has a role in coordinating the activity of the replisome at the replication fork and loading β-clamps for lagging-strand synthesis. Replication forks frequently encounter obstacles, such as template lesions, secondary structures, and tightly bound protein complexes, which will lead to fork stalling. Some pathways of fork restart have been characterized, but much is still unknown about the actors and mechanisms involved. We have in this work characterized the dnaXE145A clamp loader mutant. We find that the naturally occurring obstacles encountered by a replication fork are not tackled in a proper way by the mutant clamp loader and suggest a role for the clamp loader in the restart of stalled replication forks.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingjie Zhu ◽  
Anna Biernacka ◽  
Benjamin Pardo ◽  
Norbert Dojer ◽  
Romain Forey ◽  
...  

AbstractSequencing-based methods for mapping DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) allow measurement only of relative frequencies of DSBs between loci, which limits our understanding of the physiological relevance of detected DSBs. We propose quantitative DSB sequencing (qDSB-Seq), a method providing both DSB frequencies per cell and their precise genomic coordinates. We induced spike-in DSBs by a site-specific endonuclease and used them to quantify labeled DSBs (e.g. using i-BLESS). Utilizing qDSB-Seq, we determined numbers of DSBs induced by a radiomimetic drug and various forms of replication stress, and revealed several orders of magnitude differences in DSB frequencies. We also measured for the first time Top1-dependent absolute DSB frequencies at replication fork barriers. qDSB-Seq is compatible with various DSB labeling methods in different organisms and allows accurate comparisons of absolute DSB frequencies across samples.


Genetics ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 154 (2) ◽  
pp. 513-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth A Cromie ◽  
Catherine B Millar ◽  
Kristina H Schmidt ◽  
David R F Leach

Abstract A 246-bp imperfect palindrome has the potential to form hairpin structures in single-stranded DNA during replication. Genetic evidence suggests that these structures are converted to double-strand breaks by the SbcCD nuclease and that the double-strand breaks are repaired by recombination. We investigated the role of a range of recombination mutations on the viability of cells containing this palindrome. The palindrome was introduced into the Escherichia coli chromosome by phage λ lysogenization. This was done in both wt and sbcC backgrounds. Repair of the SbcCD-induced double-strand breaks requires a large number of proteins, including the components of both the RecB and RecF pathways. Repair does not involve PriA-dependent replication fork restart, which suggests that the double-strand break occurs after the replication fork has passed the palindrome. In the absence of SbcCD, recombination still occurs, probably using a gap substrate. This process is also PriA independent, suggesting that there is no collapse of the replication fork. In the absence of RecA, the RecQ helicase is required for palindrome viability in a sbcC mutant, suggesting that a helicase-dependent pathway exists to allow replicative bypass of secondary structures.


eLife ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanjeeta Tamang ◽  
Anastasiya Kishkevich ◽  
Carl A Morrow ◽  
Fekret Osman ◽  
Manisha Jalan ◽  
...  

Protein-DNA complexes can impede DNA replication and cause replication fork collapse. Whilst it is known that homologous recombination is deployed in such instances to restart replication, it is unclear how a stalled fork transitions into a collapsed fork at which recombination proteins can load. Previously we established assays in Schizosaccharomyces pombe for studying recombination induced by replication fork collapse at the site-specific protein-DNA barrier RTS1 (Nguyen et al., 2015). Here, we provide evidence that efficient recruitment/retention of two key recombination proteins (Rad51 and Rad52) to RTS1 depends on unloading of the polymerase sliding clamp PCNA from DNA by Elg1. We also show that, in the absence of Elg1, reduced recombination is partially suppressed by deleting fbh1 or, to a lesser extent, srs2, which encode known anti-recombinogenic DNA helicases. These findings suggest that PCNA unloading by Elg1 is necessary to limit Fbh1 and Srs2 activity, and thereby enable recombination to proceed.


Author(s):  
James E. Haber ◽  
Gregorz Ira ◽  
Anna Malkova ◽  
Neal Sugawara

Since the pioneering model for homologous recombination proposed by Robin Holliday in 1964, there has been great progress in understanding how recombination occurs at a molecular level. In the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae , one can follow recombination by physically monitoring DNA after the synchronous induction of a double–strand break (DSB) in both wild–type and mutant cells. A particularly well–studied system has been the switching of yeast mating–type ( MAT ) genes, where a DSB can be induced synchronously by expression of the site–specific HO endonuclease. Similar studies can be performed in meiotic cells, where DSBs are created by the Spo11 nuclease. There appear to be at least two competing mechanisms of homologous recombination: a synthesis–dependent strand annealing pathway leading to noncrossovers and a two–end strand invasion mechanism leading to formation and resolution of Holliday junctions (HJs), leading to crossovers. The establishment of a modified replication fork during DSB repair links gene conversion to another important repair process, break–induced replication. Despite recent revelations, almost 40 years after Holliday's model was published, the essential ideas he proposed of strand invasion and heteroduplex DNA formation, the formation and resolution of HJs, and mismatch repair, remain the basis of our thinking.


1993 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1363-1370 ◽  
Author(s):  
K M Sheehan ◽  
M R Lieber

V(D)J recombination in lymphoid cells is a site-specific process in which the activity of the recombinase enzyme is targeted to signal sequences flanking the coding elements of antigen receptor genes. The order of the steps in this reaction and their mechanistic interdependence are important to the understanding of how the reaction fails and thereby contributes to genomic instability in lymphoid cells. The products of the normal reaction are recombinant joints linking the coding sequences of the receptor genes and, reciprocally, the signal ends. Extrachromosomal substrate molecules were modified to inhibit the physical synapsis of the recombination signals. In this way, it has been possible to assess how inhibiting the formation of one joint affects the resolution efficiency of the other. Our results indicate that signal joint and coding joint formation are resolved independently in that they can be uncoupled from each other. We also find that signal synapsis is critical for the generation of recombinant products, which greatly restricts the degree of potential single-site cutting that might otherwise occur in the genome. Finally, inversion substrates manifest synaptic inhibition at much longer distances than do deletion substrates, suggesting that a parallel rather than an antiparallel alignment of the signals is required during synapsis. These observations are important for understanding the interaction of V(D)J signals with the recombinase. Moreover, the role of signal synapsis in regulating recombinase activity has significant implications for genome stability regarding the frequency of recombinase-mediated chromosomal translocations.


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