Proper maintenance of telomere structure is crucial for stable inheritance of the genome. Various checkpoint and DNA repair proteins, including evolutionarily highly conserved checkpoint kinases Tel1 (ATM) and Rad3 (ATR), play important roles in stable maintenance of telomeres. However, no clear mechanistic roles for various checkpoint and DNA repair proteins in telomere maintenance have been established. Major goal of our research is to understand how checkpoint and DNA repair proteins contribute to telomere maintenance. The current proposal will utilize fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe as a model system. Highly conserved DNA damage responses and telomere maintenance mechanisms between fission yeast and humans should be helpful in extrapolating our findings to build testable models for human cells. Deregulation of telomere maintenance mechanisms has been found to be a key event in tumorigenesis, thus mechanistic insights on how various proteins collaborate to generate functional telomeres are first needed to devise effective methods for preventing tumorigenesis. In order to be stably maintained, telomeres must fulfill two major functions. First, telomeres must protect telomeric DNA ends from fusions and degradation. Second, telomeres must provide access to telomerase to prevent loss of telomeric DNA after DNA replication. Thus, telomeres must undergo dynamic switches from the highly protected state to the more accessible state that allows recruitment of telomerase. We hypothesize that checkpoint and DNA repair proteins are recruited to telomeres in a cell cycle-regulated manner to trigger appropriate changes in telomere structure and telomere protein composition. This model will be directly tested in Aim 1. Additionally, newly developed fission yeast reporter strains will be utilized to search for potential telomere targets of Rad3 and Tel1 kinases in Aim 2. Our preliminary studies with MRN (Mre11-Rad50-Nbs1) complex mutants have suggested that recruitment of Tel1 to telomeres does not require Tel1-MRN interaction unlike recruitment of Tel1 to other DNA breaks. Therefore, attempts will be made in Aim 3 to understand the mechanistic basis for the MRN-independent recruitment of Tel1 to telomeres.
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