Environmental stress induces trinucleotide repeat mutagenesis in human cells
The dynamic mutability of microsatellite repeats is implicated in the modification of gene function and disease phenotype. Studies of the enhanced instability of long trinucleotide repeats (TNRs)—the cause of multiple human diseases—have revealed a remarkable complexity of mutagenic mechanisms. Here...
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Published in | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 112; no. 12; pp. 3764 - 3769 |
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Main Authors | , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
United States
National Academy of Sciences
24.03.2015
National Acad Sciences |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | The dynamic mutability of microsatellite repeats is implicated in the modification of gene function and disease phenotype. Studies of the enhanced instability of long trinucleotide repeats (TNRs)—the cause of multiple human diseases—have revealed a remarkable complexity of mutagenic mechanisms. Here, we show that cold, heat, hypoxic, and oxidative stresses induce mutagenesis of a long CAG repeat tract in human cells. We show that stress-response factors mediate the stress-induced mutagenesis (SIM) of CAG repeats. We show further that SIM of CAG repeats does not involve mismatch repair, nucleotide excision repair, or transcription, processes that are known to promote TNR mutagenesis in other pathways of instability. Instead, we find that these stresses stimulate DNA rereplication, increasing the proportion of cells with >4 C-value (C) DNA content. Knockdown of the replication origin-licensing factor CDT1 eliminates both stress-induced rereplication and CAG repeat mutagenesis. In addition, direct induction of rereplication in the absence of stress also increases the proportion of cells with >4C DNA content and promotes repeat mutagenesis. Thus, environmental stress triggers a unique pathway for TNR mutagenesis that likely is mediated by DNA rereplication. This pathway may impact normal cells as they encounter stresses in their environment or during development or abnormal cells as they evolve metastatic potential.
Significance Environmental stress induces complex cellular responses that improve the odds of survival. One effect of the cellular stress response is to relax the fidelity of DNA repair, with the counterintuitive strategy of increasing mutagenesis to improve fitness. Because microsatellite repeats, which are intrinsically highly mutable, serve as tuning knobs for evolutionary change, we asked whether environmental stress increased their mutagenesis. We found that cold, heat, hypoxic, and oxidative stresses induce trinucleotide repeat (TNR) mutagenesis, in a way that depends on stress response factors and apparently involves DNA rereplication. Because TNRs are overrepresented in gene-regulatory proteins, stress-induced TNR mutagenesis may provide a path for the environment to subtly alter gene regulatory networks—with attendant changes in cell behavior—during development, disease, and evolution. |
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Bibliography: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1421917112 ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Edited by Philip C. Hanawalt, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, and approved February 13, 2015 (received for review November 15, 2014) Author contributions: N.C., Y.L., and J.H.W. designed research; N.C. and Y.L. performed research; B.A.S. and P.Y. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; N.C., Y.L., P.Y., and J.H.W. analyzed data; and N.C. and J.H.W. wrote the paper. |
ISSN: | 0027-8424 1091-6490 |
DOI: | 10.1073/pnas.1421917112 |