Noncanonical mismatch repair as a source of genomic instability in human cells.

Mismatch repair (MMR) is a key antimutagenic process that increases the fidelity of DNA replication and recombination. Yet genetic experiments showed that MMR is required for antibody maturation, a process during which the immunoglobulin loci of antigen-stimulated B cells undergo extensive mutagenesis and rearrangements. In an attempt to elucidate the mechanism underlying the latter events, we set out to search for conditions that compromise MMR fidelity. Here, we describe noncanonical MMR (ncMMR), a process in which the MMR pathway is activated by various DNA lesions rather than by mispairs. ncMMR is largely independent of DNA replication, lacks strand directionality, triggers PCNA monoubiquitylation, and promotes recruitment of the error-prone polymerase-η to chromatin. Importantly, ncMMR is not limited to B cells but occurs also in other cell types. Moreover, it contributes to mutagenesis induced by alkylating agents. Activation of ncMMR may therefore play a role in genomic instability and cancer.

Non-canonical uracil processing in DNA gives rise to double-strand breaks and deletions: relevance to class switch recombination.

During class switch recombination (CSR), antigen-stimulated B-cells rearrange their immunoglobulin constant heavy chain (CH) loci to generate antibodies with different effector functions. CSR is initiated by activation-induced deaminase (AID), which converts cytosines in switch (S) regions, repetitive sequences flanking the CH loci, to uracils. Although U/G mispairs arising in this way are generally efficiently repaired to C/Gs by uracil DNA glycosylase (UNG)-initiated base excision repair (BER), uracil processing in S-regions of activated B-cells occasionally gives rise to double strand breaks (DSBs), which trigger CSR. Surprisingly, genetic experiments revealed that CSR is dependent not only on AID and UNG, but also on mismatch repair (MMR). To elucidate the role of MMR in CSR, we studied the processing of uracil-containing DNA substrates in extracts of MMR-proficient and -deficient human cells, as well as in a system reconstituted from recombinant BER and MMR proteins. Here, we show that the interplay of these repair systems gives rise to DSBs in vitro and to genomic deletions and mutations in vivo, particularly in an S-region sequence. Our findings further suggest that MMR affects pathway choice in DSB repair. Given its amenability to manipulation, our system represents a powerful tool for the molecular dissection of CSR.

Biochemical characterization of a cancer-associated E109K missense variant of human exonuclease 1.

Mutations in the mismatch repair (MMR) genes MSH2, MSH6, MLH1 and PMS2 are associated with Lynch Syndrome (LS), a familial predisposition to early-onset cancer of the colon and other organs. Because not all LS families carry mutations in these four genes, the search for cancer-associated mutations was extended to genes encoding other members of the mismatch repairosome. This effort identified mutations in EXO1, which encodes the sole exonuclease implicated in MMR. One of these mutations, E109K, was reported to abrogate the catalytic activity of the enzyme, yet, in the crystal structure of the EXO1/DNA complex, this glutamate is far away from both DNA and the catalytic site of the enzyme. In an attempt to elucidate the reason underlying the putative loss of function of this variant, we expressed it in Escherichia coli, and tested its activity in a series of biochemical assays. We now report that, contrary to earlier reports, and unlike the catalytic site mutant D173A, the EXO1 E109K variant resembled the wild-type (wt) enzyme on all tested substrates. In the light of our findings, we attempt here to reinterpret the results of the phenotypic characterization of a knock-in mouse carrying the E109K mutation and cells derived from it.

Interplay between mismatch repair and chromatin assembly.

Single strand nicks and gaps in DNA have been reported to increase the efficiency of nucleosome loading mediated by chromatin assembly factor 1 (CAF-1). However, on mismatch-containing substrates, these strand discontinuities are utilized by the mismatch repair (MMR) system as loading sites for exonuclease 1, at which degradation of the error-containing strand commences. Because packaging of DNA into chromatin might inhibit MMR, we were interested to learn whether chromatin assembly is differentially regulated on heteroduplex and homoduplex substrates. We now show that the presence of a mismatch in a nicked plasmid substrate delays nucleosome loading in human cell extracts. Our data also suggest that, once the mismatch is removed, repair of the single-stranded gap is accompanied by efficient nucleosome loading. We postulated that the balance between MMR and chromatin assembly might be governed by proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), the processivity factor of replicative DNA polymerases, which is loaded at DNA termini and which interacts with the MSH6 subunit of the mismatch recognition factor MutSα, as well as with CAF-1. We now show that this regulation might be more complex; MutSα and CAF-1 interact not only with PCNA, but also with each other. In vivo this interaction increases during S-phase and may be controlled by the phosphorylation status of the p150 subunit of CAF-1.

Cytosolic Bax: does it require binding proteins to keep its pro-apoptotic activity in check?

Bax is kept inactive in the cytosol by refolding its C-terminal transmembrane domain into the hydrophobic binding pocket. Although energetic calculations predicted this conformation to be stable, numerous Bax binding proteins were reported and suggested to further stabilize inactive Bax. Unfortunately, most of them have not been validated in a physiological context on the endogenous level. Here we use gel filtration analysis of the cytosol of primary and established cells to show that endogenous, inactive Bax runs 20-30 kDa higher than recombinant Bax, suggesting Bax dimerization or the binding of a small protein. Dimerization was excluded by a lack of interaction of differentially tagged Bax proteins and by comparing the sizes of dimerized recombinant Bax with cytosolic Bax on blue native gels. Surprisingly, when analyzing cytosolic Bax complexes by high sensitivity mass spectrometry after anti-Bax immunoprecipitation or consecutive purification by gel filtration and blue native gel electrophoresis, we detected only one protein, called p23 hsp90 co-chaperone, which consistently and specifically co-purified with Bax. However, this protein could not be validated as a crucial inhibitory Bax binding partner as its over- or underexpression did not show any apoptosis defects. By contrast, cytosolic Bax exhibits a slight molecular mass shift on SDS-PAGE as compared with recombinant Bax, which suggests a posttranslational modification and/or a structural difference between the two proteins. We propose that in most healthy cells, cytosolic endogenous Bax is a monomeric protein that does not necessarily need a binding partner to keep its pro-apoptotic activity in check.