Centromeres are dismantled by foundational meiotic proteins Spo11 and Rec8

Haitong Hou (), Eftychia Kyriacou, Rahul Thadani, Michael Klutstein, Joseph H. Chapman and Julia Promisel Cooper ()
Additional contact information
Haitong Hou: University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Eftychia Kyriacou: Center for Cancer Research, NCI, NIH
Rahul Thadani: University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Michael Klutstein: Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Joseph H. Chapman: Center for Cancer Research, NCI, NIH
Julia Promisel Cooper: University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

Nature, 2021, vol. 591, issue 7851, 671-676

Abstract: Abstract Meiotic processes are potentially dangerous to genome stability and could be disastrous if activated in proliferative cells. Here we show that two key meiosis-defining proteins, the topoisomerase Spo11 (which forms double-strand breaks) and the meiotic cohesin Rec8, can dismantle centromeres. This dismantlement is normally observable only in mutant cells that lack the telomere bouquet, which provides a nuclear microdomain conducive to centromere reassembly1; however, overexpression of Spo11 or Rec8 leads to levels of centromere dismantlement that cannot be countered by the bouquet. Specific nucleosome remodelling factors mediate centromere dismantlement by Spo11 and Rec8. Ectopic expression of either protein in proliferating cells leads to the loss of mitotic kinetochores in both fission yeast and human cells. Hence, while centromeric chromatin has been characterized as extraordinarily stable, Spo11 and Rec8 challenge this stability and may jeopardize kinetochores in cancers that express meiotic proteins.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03279-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:591:y:2021:i:7851:d:10.1038_s41586-021-03279-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03279-8

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().