Defective transfer of parental histone decreases frequency of homologous recombination in budding yeast
Recycling of parental histones is an important step in epigenetic inheritance. During DNA replication, DNA polymerase epsilon subunit DPB3/DPB4 and DNA replication helicase subunit MCM2 are involved in the transfer of parental histones to the leading and lagging DNA strands, respectively. Single Dpb3 deletion (dpb3[DELTA]) or Mcm2 mutation (mcm2-3A), which each disrupt one parental histone transfer pathway, leads to the other[prime]s predominance. However, the impact of the two histone transfer pathways on chromatin structure and DNA repair remains elusive. In this study, we used budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to determine the genetic and epigenetic outcomes from disruption of parental histone H3-H4 tetramer transfer. We found that a dpb3[DELTA]/mcm2-3A double mutant did not exhibit the single dpb3[DELTA] and mcm2-3A mutants[prime] asymmetric parental histone patterns, suggesting that the processes by which parental histones are transferred to the leading and lagging strands are independent. Surprisingly, the frequency of homologous recombination was significantly lower in dpb3[DELTA], mcm2-3A, and dpb3[DELTA]/mcm2-3A mutants relative to the wild-type strain, likely due to the elevated levels of free histones detected in the mutant cells. Together, these findings indicate that proper transfer of parental histones to the leading and lagging strands during DNA replication is essential for maintaining chromatin structure and that high levels of free histones due to parental histone transfer defects are detrimental to cells. Overall design: We synchronized yeast cells (Wile type and other mutant cells) at G1 and released into early S phase in the presence of BrdU, and hydroxyurea (HU). We then performed BrdU immunoprecipitation using anti-BrdU antibodies following single-strand DNA library preparation and sequencing (ssSeq). we also performed protein ChIP followed by single-strand DNA sequencing (ChIP-ssSeq) for H3K56ac, H3K4me3. The sequencing tag was mapped to both Watson (red) and Crick (blue) strands of the reference genome.