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New anticancer therapeutics require extensive in vivo characterization to identify endogenous and exogenous factors affecting efficacy, to measure toxicity and mutagenicity, and to determine genotypes that result in therapeutic sensitivity or resistance. We used Caenorhabditis elegans as a platform with which to characterize properties of the anticancer therapeutic CX-5461. To understand the processes that respond to CX-5461-induced damage, we generated pharmacogenetic profiles for a panel of C. elegans DNA replication and repair mutants with common DNA-damaging agents for comparison with the profile of CX-5461. We found that multiple repair pathways, including homology-directed repair, microhomology-mediated end joining, nucleotide excision repair, and translesion synthesis, were needed for CX-5461 tolerance. To determine the frequency and spectrum of CX-5461-induced mutations, we used a genetic balancer to capture CX-5461-induced mutations. We found that CX-5461 is mutagenic, resulting in both large copy number variations and a high frequency of single-nucleotide variations (SNVs), which are consistent with the pharmacogenetic profile for CX-5461. Whole-genome sequencing of CX-5461-exposed animals found that CX-5461-induced SNVs exhibited a distinct mutational signature. We also phenocopied the CX-5461 photoreactivity observed in clinical trials and demonstrated that CX-5461 generates reactive oxygen species when exposed to UVA radiation. Together, the data from C. elegans demonstrate that CX-5461 is a multimodal DNA-damaging anticancer agent.

Given the broad utility of humanized yeast to model and study human biology, a reference set of human genes that can replace cognate yeast genes and operate in yeast is needed. Hamza et al. present..., Cross-species complementation can be used to generate humanized yeast, which is a valuable resource with which to model and study human biology. Humanized yeast can be used as an in vivo platform to screen for chemical inhibition of human protein drug targets. To this end, we report the systematic complementation of nonessential yeast genes implicated in chromosome instability (CIN) with their human homologs. We identified 20 human–yeast complementation pairs that are replaceable in 44 assays that test rescue of chemical sensitivity and/or CIN defects. We selected a human–yeast pair (hFEN1/yRAD27), which is frequently overexpressed in cancer and is an anticancer therapeutic target, to perform in vivo inhibitor assays using a humanized yeast cell-based platform. In agreement with published in vitro assays, we demonstrate that HU-based PTPD is a species-specific hFEN1 inhibitor. In contrast, another reported hFEN1 inhibitor, the arylstibonic acid derivative NSC-13755, was determined to have off-target effects resulting in a synthetic lethal phenotype with yRAD27-deficient strains. Our study expands the list of human–yeast complementation pairs to nonessential genes by defining novel cell-based assays that can be utilized as a broad resource to study human drug targets.

Synthetic dosage lethality (SDL) is a type of genetic interaction that occurs when increasing the expression of a gene causes a fitness defect, such as lethality, in a specific mutant background but has little effect on fitness in a wild-type background. SDL genetic interactions discovered in model organisms such as the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae , represent candidate genetic interactions that may be conserved in human cells. In some cases, SDL genetic interactions can be applied to study the biological implications of genes overexpressed in cancer and to discover potential anticancer therapeutic drug targets. Here, we provide a protocol for screening a query overexpression gene against ordered arrays of yeast mutant strains to identify mutations that sensitize yeast to increased dosage of a specific gene product. We outline applications and procedures for screening with an inducibly overexpressed wild-type gene, a common feature of cancer cells, or with an inducibly overexpressed gene carrying a dominant-negative missense mutation as a model of protein-inhibitor interactions. This high-throughput screening platform is adapted from synthetic genetic array (SGA) technology and enables the generation of large-scale SDL genetic interaction networks that can be applied to study gene/pathway function and to identify cross-species cancer-relevant processes.

Genetic screens can identify synthetic lethal (SL) interactions and uncover potential anticancer therapeutic targets. However, most SL screens have utilized knockout or knockdown approaches that do not accurately mimic chemical inhibition of a target protein. Here, we test whether missense mutations can be utilized as a model for a type of protein inhibition that creates a dominant gain-of-function cytotoxicity. We expressed missense mutations in the FEN1 endonuclease and the replication-associated helicase, CHL1, that inhibited enzymatic activity but retained substrate binding, and found that these mutations elicited a dominant SL phenotype consistent with the generation of cytotoxic protein–DNA or protein–protein intermediates. Genetic screens with nuclease-defective hFEN1 and helicase-deficient yCHL1 captured dominant SL interactions, in which ectopic expression of the mutant form, in the presence of the wild-type form, caused SL in specific mutant backgrounds. Expression of nuclease-defective hFEN1 in yeast elicited DNA binding-dependent dominant SL with homologous recombination mutants. In contrast, dominant SL interactions with helicase-deficient yCHL1 were observed in spindle-associated, Ctf18-alternative replication factor C (Ctf18-RFC) clamp loader complex, and cohesin mutant backgrounds. These results highlight the different mechanisms underlying SL interactions that occur in the presence of an inhibited form of the target protein and point to the utility of modeling trapping mutations in pursuit of more clinically relevant SL interactions.

Synthetic dosage lethality (SDL) is a type of genetic interaction that occurs when increasing the expression of a gene causes a fitness defect, such as lethality, in a specific mutant background but has little effect on fitness in a wild-type background. SDL genetic interactions discovered in model organisms such as the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae , represent candidate genetic interactions that may be conserved in human cells. In some cases, SDL genetic interactions can be applied to study the biological implications of genes overexpressed in cancer and to discover potential anticancer therapeutic drug targets. Here, we provide a protocol for screening a query overexpression gene against ordered arrays of yeast mutant strains to identify mutations that sensitize yeast to increased dosage of a specific gene product. We outline applications and procedures for screening with an inducibly overexpressed wild-type gene, a common feature of cancer cells, or with an inducibly overexpressed gene carrying a dominant-negative missense mutation as a model of protein-inhibitor interactions. This high-throughput screening platform is adapted from synthetic genetic array (SGA) technology and enables the generation of large-scale SDL genetic interaction networks that can be applied to study gene/pathway function and to identify cross-species cancer-relevant processes.

New anti-cancer therapeutics require extensivein vivocharacterization to identify endogenous and exogenous factors affecting efficacy, to measure toxicity and mutagenicity, and to determine genotypes resulting in therapeutic sensitivity or resistance. We usedCaenorhabditis elegansas a platform with which to characterize properties of anti-cancer therapeutic agentsin vivo. We generated a map of chemigenetic interactions between DNA damage response mutants and common DNA damaging agents. We used this map to investigate the properties of the new anti-cancer therapeutic CX-5461. We phenocopied the photoreactivity observed in CX-5461 clinical trials and found that CX-5461 generates reactive oxygen species when exposed to UVA radiation. We demonstrated that CX-5461 is a mutator, resulting in both large copy number variations and a high frequency of single nucleotide variations (SNVs). CX-5461-induced SNVs exhibited a distinct mutational signature. Consistent with the wide range of CX-5461-induced mutation types, we found that multiple repair pathways were needed for CX-5461 tolerance. Together, the data fromC. elegansdemonstrate that CX-5461 is a multimodal DNA damaging agent with strong similarity to ellipticines, a class of antineoplastic agents, and to anthracycline-based chemotherapeutics.

While the pace of discovery of human genetic variants in tumors, patients, and diverse populations has rapidly accelerated, deciphering their functional consequence has become rate-limiting. Using cross-species complementation, model organisms like the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, can be utilized to fill this gap and serve as a platform for testing human genetic variants. To this end, we performed two parallel screens, a one-to-one complementation screen for essential yeast genes implicated in chromosome instability and a pool-to-pool screen that queried all possible essential yeast genes for rescue of lethality by all possible human homologs. Our work identified 65 human cDNAs that can replace the null allele of essential yeast genes, including the nonorthologous pair yRFT1/hSEC61A1. We chose four human cDNAs (hLIG1, hSSRP1, hPPP1CA, and hPPP1CC) for which their yeast gene counterparts function in chromosome stability and assayed in yeast 35 tumor-specific missense mutations for growth defects and sensitivity to DNA-damaging agents. This resulted in a set of human–yeast gene complementation pairs that allow human genetic variants to be readily characterized in yeast, and a prioritized list of somatic mutations that could contribute to chromosome instability in human tumors. These data establish the utility of this cross-species experimental approach.

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae iron-responsive transcription factor, Aft1, has a well established role in regulating iron homeostasis through the transcriptional induction of iron-regulon genes. However, recent studies have implicated Aft1 in other cellular processes independent of iron regulation such as chromosome stability. In addition, chromosome spreads and two-hybrid data suggest that Aft1 interacts with and co-localizes with kinetochore proteins; however, the cellular implications of this have not been established. Here, we demonstrate that Aft1 associates with the kinetochore complex through Iml3. Furthermore, like Iml3, Aft1 is required for the increased association of cohesin with pericentric chromatin, which is required to resist microtubule tension, and aft1Δ cells display chromosome segregation defects in meiosis. Our work defines a new role for Aft1 in chromosome stability and transmission.

DNA:RNA hybrid formation is emerging as a significant cause of genome instability in biological systems ranging from bacteria to mammals. Here we describe the genome-wide distribution of DNA:RNA hybrid prone loci in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by DNA:RNA immunoprecipitation (DRIP) followed by hybridization on tiling microarray. These profiles show that DNA:RNA hybrids preferentially accumulated at rDNA, Ty1 and Ty2 transposons, telomeric repeat regions and a subset of open reading frames (ORFs). The latter are generally highly transcribed and have high GC content. Interestingly, significant DNA:RNA hybrid enrichment was also detected at genes associated with antisense transcripts. The expression of antisense-associated genes was also significantly altered upon overexpression of RNase H, which degrades the RNA in hybrids. Finally, we uncover mutant-specific differences in the DRIP profiles of a Sen1 helicase mutant, RNase H deletion mutant and Hpr1 THO complex mutant compared to wild type, suggesting different roles for these proteins in DNA:RNA hybrid biology. Our profiles of DNA:RNA hybrid prone loci provide a resource for understanding the properties of hybrid-forming regions in vivo, extend our knowledge of hybrid-mitigating enzymes, and contribute to models of antisense-mediated gene regulation. A summary of this paper was presented at the 26th International Conference on Yeast Genetics and Molecular Biology, August 2013., Author Summary RNA processing factors are mutated in human cancers, inherited developmental disorders and neurodegenerative syndromes. Defects in RNA processing have been associated with increased levels of mutations and DNA damage in part via the formation of DNA:RNA hybrids. Although it is likely that specific regions of the genome are more prone to DNA:RNA hybrid formation, a map of hybrid-prone regions is not available. In this study, we describe the genome-wide distribution of DNA:RNA hybrids in both normal and mutant Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells. The resulting profiles contribute to both our understanding of the general properties of hybrid-forming loci and to our knowledge of hybrid-mitigating enzymes. Interestingly, significant DNA:RNA hybrid enrichment was detected at genes associated with antisense transcription. We show that overexpression of RNase H, which degrades the RNA in hybrids, significantly affects the expression of genes associated with antisense transcripts. These findings support a role for DNA:RNA hybrids in regulation of gene expression by antisense transcripts.

Recent global proteomic and genomic studies have determined that lysine acetylation is a highly abundant posttranslational modification. The next challenge is connecting lysine acetyltransferases (KATs) to their cellular targets. We hypothesize that proteins that physically interact with KATs may not only predict the cellular function of the KATs but may be acetylation targets. We have developed a mass spectrometry-based method that generates a KAT protein interaction network from which we simultaneously identify both in vivo acetylation sites and in vitro acetylation sites. This modified chromatin-immunopurification coupled to an in vitro KAT assay with mass spectrometry (mChIP-KAT-MS) was applied to the Saccharomyces cerevisiae KAT nucleosome acetyltransferase of histone H4 (NuA4). Using mChIP-KAT-MS, we define the NuA4 interactome and in vitro-enriched acetylome, identifying over 70 previously undescribed physical interaction partners for the complex and over 150 acetyl lysine residues, of which 108 are NuA4-specific in vitro sites. Through this method we determine NuA4 acetylation of its own subunit Epl1 is a means of self-regulation and identify a unique link between NuA4 and the spindle pole body. Our work demonstrates that this methodology may serve as a valuable tool in connecting KATs with their cellular targets.

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae transcription factor Aft1 is activated in iron-deficient cells to induce the expression of iron regulon genes, which coordinate the increase of iron uptake and remodel cellular metabolism to survive low-iron conditions. In addition, Aft1 has been implicated in numerous cellular processes including cell-cycle progression and chromosome stability; however, it is unclear if all cellular effects of Aft1 are mediated through iron homeostasis. To further investigate the cellular processes affected by Aft1, we identified >70 deletion mutants that are sensitive to perturbations in AFT1 levels using genome-wide synthetic lethal and synthetic dosage lethal screens. Our genetic network reveals that Aft1 affects a diverse range of cellular processes, including the RIM101 pH pathway, cell-wall stability, DNA damage, protein transport, chromosome stability, and mitochondrial function. Surprisingly, only a subset of mutants identified are sensitive to extracellular iron fluctuations or display genetic interactions with mutants of iron regulon genes AFT2 or FET3. We demonstrate that Aft1 works in parallel with the RIM101 pH pathway and the role of Aft1 in DNA damage repair is mediated by iron. In contrast, through both directed studies and microarray transcriptional profiling, we show that the role of Aft1 in chromosome maintenance and benomyl resistance is independent of its iron regulatory role, potentially through a nontranscriptional mechanism.

Major nuclear envelope abnormalities, such as disruption and/or presence of intranuclear organelles, have rarely been described in cardiomyocytes from dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) patients. In this study, we screened a series of 25 unrelated DCM patient samples for (a) cardiomyocyte nuclear abnormalities and (b) mutations in LMNA and TMPO as they are two DCM-causing genes that encode proteins involved in maintaining nuclear envelope architecture. Among the 25 heart samples investigated, we identified major cardiomyocyte nuclear abnormalities in 8 patients. Direct sequencing allowed the detection of three heterozygous LMNA mutations (p.D192G, p.Q353K and p.R541S) in three patients. By multiplex ligation-dependant probe amplification (MLPA)/quantitative real-time PCR, we found a heterozygous deletion encompassing exons 3–12 of the LMNA gene in one patient. Immunostaining demonstrated that this deletion led to a decrease in lamin A/C expression in cardiomyocytes from this patient. This LMNA deletion as well as the p.D192G mutation was found in patients displaying major cardiomyocyte nuclear envelope abnormalities, while the p.Q353K and p.R541S mutations were found in patients without specific nuclear envelope abnormalities. None of the DCM patients included in the study carried a mutation in the TMPO gene. Taken together, we found no evidence of a genotype–phenotype relationship between the onset and the severity of DCM, the presence of nuclear abnormalities and the presence or absence of LMNA mutations. We demonstrated that a large deletion in LMNA associated with reduced levels of the protein in the nuclear envelope suggesting a haploinsufficiency mechanism can lead to cardiomyocyte nuclear envelope disruption and thus underlie the pathogenesis of DCM.