Cse4 (CenH3) Association with the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Plasmid Partitioning Locus in Its Native and Chromosomally Integrated States: Implications in Centromere Evolution

Abstract

The histone H3 variant Cse4 specifies centromere identity in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by its incorporation into a special nucleosome positioned at CEN DNA and promotes the assembly of the kinetochore complex, which is required for faithful chromosome segregation. Our previous work showed that Cse4 is also associated with the partitioning locus STB of the 2μm circle—a multicopy plasmid that resides in the yeast nucleus and propagates itself stably. Cse4 is essential for the functional assembly of the plasmid partitioning complex, including the recruitment of the yeast cohesin complex at STB. We have located Cse4 association strictly at the origin-proximal subregion of STB. Three of the five directly repeated tandem copies of a 62-bp consensus sequence element constituting this region are necessary and sufficient for the recruitment of Cse4. The association of Cse4 with STB is dependent on Scm3, the loading factor responsible for the incorporation of Cse4 into the CEN nucleosome. A chromosomally integrated copy of STB confers on the integration site the capacity for Cse4 association as well as cohesin assembly. The localization of Cse4 in chromatin digested by micrococcal nuclease is consistent with the potential assembly of one Cse4-containing nucleosome, but not more than two, at STB. The remarkable ability of STB to acquire a very specialized, and strictly regulated, chromosome segregation factor suggests its plausible evolutionary kinship with CEN.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported by National Institutes of Health award GM-064363. Partial support was provided by grant F-1274 from the Robert F. Welch Foundation.

We thank Jennifer Gerton, Kim Nasmyth, Munira Basrai, and Sue Biggins for the gifts of yeast strains and plasmids. We acknowledge with thanks the help provided by Hong Cui with one set of ChIP assays. We are grateful for the comments from referees, which provided the inducement to clarify subtle but important features of 2μm plasmid partitioning.

Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/MCB.01191-10.