MCAT Biological and Biochemical Foundations of Living Systems: Passage 5 — Flashcards

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The fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe Rec12 protein, which is the homolog of Spo11 in other organisms, initiates meiotic recombination by creating DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) and covalently linking to the 5' DNA ends of the break. This protein-DNA linkage has previously been detected only in mutants such as rad50S, in which break repair is impeded and DSBs accumulate. In the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the DSB distribution in a rad50S mutant is markedly different from that in wild-type (RAD50) meiosis, and it was suggested that this might also be true for other organisms. Researchers have shown that linkages between Rec12 and DNA can actually be detected in Sc. pombe rad50(+) cells, which are proficient for DSB repair. In fact, genome-wide microarray analysis of Rec12-DNA reveals indistinguishable meiotic DSB distributions in rad50(+) and rad50S strains of Sc. pombe, unlike in Sc. cerevisiae. These results confirm earlier findings describing the occurrence of widely spaced DSBs primarily in large intergenic regions of DNA and demonstrate the relevance and usefulness of fission yeast studies employing rad50S. The researchers have proposed that the differential behavior of rad50S strains reflects a major difference in DSB regulation between the two species—specifically, the requirement for the Rad50-containing complex for DSB formation in budding yeast but not in fission yeast. Use of rad50S and related mutations may be a useful method for DSB analysis in other species.