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Molecular and Cellular Biology, September 2007, p. 6153-6162, Vol. 27, No. 17
0270-7306/07/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/MCB.00787-07
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
,
Sadia Rahman,2,
Michael Lisby,3
Rodney Rothstein,4 and
Xiaolan Zhao2*
Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, 1212 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, New York 10027,1 Molecular Biology Program, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, 1275 York Avenue, New York, New York 10021,2 Department of Molecular Biology, University of Copenhagen, DK-2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark,3 Department of Genetics and Development, Columbia University Medical Center, 701 West 168th Street, New York, New York 10032-27044
Received 3 May 2007/ Returned for modification 29 May 2007/ Accepted 14 June 2007
Recombination is important for repairing DNA lesions, yet it can also lead to genomic rearrangements. This process must be regulated, and recently, sumoylation-mediated mechanisms were found to inhibit Rad51-dependent recombination. Here, we report that the absence of the Slx5-Slx8 complex, a newly identified player in the SUMO (small ubiquitin-like modifier) pathway, led to increased Rad51-dependent and Rad51-independent recombination. The increases were most striking during S phase, suggesting an accumulation of DNA lesions during replication. Consistent with this view, Slx8 protein localized to replication centers. In addition, like SUMO E2 mutants, slx8
mutants exhibited clonal lethality, which was due to the overamplification of 2µm, an extrachromosomal plasmid. Interestingly, in both SUMO E2 and slx8
mutants, clonal lethality was rescued by deleting genes required for Rad51-independent recombination but not those involved in Rad51-dependent events. These results suggest that sumoylation negatively regulates Rad51-independent recombination, and indeed, the Slx5-Slx8 complex affected the sumoylation of several enzymes involved in early steps of Rad51-independent recombination. We propose that, during replication, the Slx5-Slx8 complex helps prevent DNA lesions that are acted upon by recombination. In addition, the complex inhibits Rad51-independent recombination via modulating the sumoylation of DNA repair proteins.
Published ahead of print on 25 June 2007.
Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://mcb.asm.org/.
R.C.B. and S.R. contributed equally to this work.
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