DNA Recombination-Initiation Plays a Role in the Extremely Biased Inheritance of Yeast [rho⁻] Mitochondrial DNA That Contains the Replication Origin ori5

Abstract

Hypersuppressiveness, as observed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is an extremely biased inheritance of a small mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) fragment that contains a replication origin (HS [rho⁻] mtDNA). Our previous studies showed that concatemers (linear head-to-tail multimers) are obligatory intermediates for mtDNA partitioning and are primarily formed by rolling-circle replication mediated by Mhr1, a protein required for homologous mtDNA recombination. In this study, we found that Mhr1 is required for the hypersuppressiveness of HS [ori5] [rho⁻] mtDNA harboring ori5, one of the replication origins of normal ([rho⁺]) mtDNA. In addition, we detected an Ntg1-stimulated double-strand break at the ori5 locus. Purified Ntg1, a base excision repair enzyme, introduced a double-stranded break by itself into HS [ori5] [rho⁻] mtDNA at ori5 isolated from yeast cells. Both hypersuppressiveness and concatemer formation of HS [ori5] [rho⁻] mtDNA are simultaneously suppressed by the ntg1 null mutation. These results support a model in which, like homologous recombination, rolling-circle HS [ori5] [rho⁻] mtDNA replication is initiated by double-stranded breakage in ori5, followed by Mhr1-mediated homologous pairing of the processed nascent DNA ends with circular mtDNA. The hypersuppressiveness of HS [ori5] [rho⁻] mtDNA depends on a replication advantage furnished by the higher density of ori5 sequences and on a segregation advantage furnished by the higher genome copy number on transmitted concatemers.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

This study was supported in part by a grant from the Bioarchitect Research Program of RIKEN to F.L. and T.S., by a grant from the Life Science Foundation of Japan to F.L., by a grant for CREST from JST, a Grant-in-Aid from the Ministry of Education, Sports, Culture, Science and Technology of Japan to T.S., and a Grant-in-Aid (18570168) from the Ministry of Education, Sports, Culture, Science and Technology of Japan to F.L.