Dysfunctional DNA repair pathway via defective FANCD2 gene engenders multifarious exomic and transcriptomic effects in Fanconi anemia.

Background: Fanconi anemia (FA) affects only one in 130,000 births, but has severe and diverse clinical consequences. It has been theorized that defects in the FA DNA cross-link repair complex lead to a spectrum of variants that are responsible for those diverse clinical phenotypes.

Methods: Using NextGen sequencing, we show that a clinically derived FA cell line had accumulated numerous genetic variants, including high-impact mutations, such as deletion of start codons, introduction of premature stop codons, missense mutations, and INDELs.

Genomic leftovers: identifying novel microsatellites, over-represented motifs and functional elements in the human genome.

The human genome is 99% complete. This study contributes to filling the 1% gap by enriching previously unknown repeat regions called microsatellites (MST). We devised a Global MST Enrichment (GME) kit to enrich and nextgen sequence 2 colorectal cell lines and 16 normal human samples to illustrate its utility in identifying contigs from reads that do not map to the genome reference.

Population analysis of microsatellite genotypes reveals a signature associated with ovarian cancer.

Ovarian cancer (OV) ranks fifth in cancer deaths among women, yet there remain few informative biomarkers for this disease. Microsatellites are repetitive genomic regions which we hypothesize could be a source of novel biomarkers for OV and have traditionally been under-appreciated relative to Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs). In this study, we explore microsatellite variation as a potential novel source of genomic variation associated with OV.

Exome-wide somatic microsatellite variation is altered in cells with DNA repair deficiencies.

Microsatellites (MST), tandem repeats of 1-6 nucleotide motifs, are mutational hot-spots with a bias for insertions and deletions (INDELs) rather than single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The majority of MST instability studies are limited to a small number of loci, the Bethesda markers, which are only informative for a subset of colorectal cancers. In this paper we evaluate non-haplotype alleles present within next-gen sequencing data to evaluate somatic MST variation (SMV) within DNA repair proficient and DNA repair defective cell lines.

Thymineless death is inhibited by CsrA in Escherichia coli lacking the SOS response.

Thymineless death (TLD) is the rapid loss of colony-forming ability in bacterial, yeast and human cells starved for thymine, and is the mechanism of action of common chemotherapeutic drugs. In Escherichia coli, significant loss of viability during TLD requires the SOS replication-stress/DNA-damage response, specifically its role in inducing the inhibitor of cell division, SulA. An independent RecQ- and RecJ-dependent TLD pathway accounts for a similarly large additional component of TLD, and a third SOS- and RecQ/J-independent TLD pathway has also been observed.

Stress-induced modulators of repeat instability and genome evolution.

Evolution hinges on the ability of organisms to adapt to their environment. A key regulator of adaptability is mutation rate, which must be balanced to maintain genome fidelity while permitting sufficient plasticity to cope with environmental changes. Multiple mechanisms govern an organism's mutation rate.

Pathways of resistance to thymineless death in Escherichia coli and the function of UvrD.

Thymineless death (TLD) is the rapid loss of viability in bacterial, yeast, and human cells starved of thymine. TLD is the mode of action of common anticancer drugs and some antibiotics. TLD in Escherichia coli is accompanied by blocked replication and chromosomal DNA loss and recent work identified activities of recombination protein RecA and the SOS DNA-damage response as causes of TLD.

Competition of Escherichia coli DNA polymerases I, II and III with DNA Pol IV in stressed cells.

Escherichia coli has five DNA polymerases, one of which, the low-fidelity Pol IV or DinB, is required for stress-induced mutagenesis in the well-studied Lac frameshift-reversion assay. Although normally present at approximately 200 molecules per cell, Pol IV is recruited to acts of DNA double-strand-break repair, and causes mutagenesis, only when at least two cellular stress responses are activated: the SOS DNA-damage response, which upregulates DinB approximately 10-fold, and the RpoS-controlled general-stress response, which upregulates Pol IV about 2-fold. DNA Pol III was also implicated but its role in mutagenesis was unclear.

Role of RecA and the SOS response in thymineless death in Escherichia coli.

Thymineless death (TLD) is a classic and enigmatic phenomenon, documented in bacterial, yeast, and human cells, whereby cells lose viability rapidly when deprived of thymine. Despite its being the essential mode of action of important chemotherapeutic agents, and despite having been studied extensively for decades, the basic mechanisms of TLD have remained elusive. In Escherichia coli, several proteins involved in homologous recombination (HR) are required for TLD, however, surprisingly, RecA, the central HR protein and activator of the SOS DNA-damage response was reported not to be.

RecQ-dependent death-by-recombination in cells lacking RecG and UvrD.

Maintenance of genomic stability is critical for all cells. Homologous recombination (HR) pathways promote genome stability using evolutionarily conserved proteins such as RecA, SSB, and RecQ, the Escherichia coli homologue of five human proteins at least three of which suppress genome instability and cancer. A previous report indicated that RecQ promotes the net accumulation in cells of intermolecular HR intermediates (IRIs), a net effect opposite that of the yeast and two human RecQ homologues.

A switch from high-fidelity to error-prone DNA double-strand break repair underlies stress-induced mutation.

Special mechanisms of mutation are induced in microbes under growth-limiting stress causing genetic instability, including occasional adaptive mutations that may speed evolution. Both the mutation mechanisms and their control by stress have remained elusive. We provide evidence that the molecular basis for stress-induced mutagenesis in an E.