Donor Preference Meets Heterochromatin: Moonlighting Activities of a Recombinational Enhancer in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

• Published in: Genetics (Austin) Vol. 204; no. 3; pp. 1065 - 1074
• Main Authors: Dodson, Anne E, Rine, Jasper
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Genetics Society of America 01.11.2016
• Subjects: Cell cycle; Deoxyribonucleic acid; DNA; Enhancer Elements, Genetic; Gene expression; Gene Expression Regulation, Fungal; Gene Silencing; Genes, Mating Type, Fungal; Genomes; Heterochromatin; Heterochromatin - genetics; Histone Acetyltransferases - genetics; Histone Acetyltransferases - metabolism; Investigations; Proteins; Recombination, Genetic; Saccharomyces cerevisiae; Saccharomyces cerevisiae - genetics; Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins - genetics; Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins - metabolism; Transcription factors; Yeast; Yeasts; long-range regulation; Sas2; mating-type switching; silencing
• ISSN: 1943-2631; 0016-6731; 1943-2631
• DOI: 10.1534/genetics.116.194696

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a small, intergenic region known as the recombination enhancer regulates donor selection during mating-type switching and also helps shape the conformation of chromosome III. Using an assay that detects transient losses of heterochromatic repression, we found that the recombination enhancer also acts at a distance in cis to modify the stability of gene silencing. In a mating-type-specific manner, the recombination enhancer destabilized the heterochromatic repression of a gene located ∼17 kbp away. This effect depended on a subregion of the recombination enhancer that is largely sufficient to determine donor preference. Therefore, this subregion affects both recombination and transcription from a distance. These observations identify a rare example of long-range transcriptional regulation in yeast and raise the question of whether other cis elements also mediate dual effects on recombination and gene expression.