Unlike E. coli, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mt) expresses a Ku-like protein and an ATP-dependent DNA ligase that can perform non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ). We have expressed the Mt-Ku and Mt-Ligase D in E. coli using an arabinose-inducible promoter and expression vectors that integrate into specific sites in the E. coli chromosome. E. coli strains have been generated that express the Mt-Ku and Mt-Ligase D on a genetic background that is wild-type for repair, or deficient in either the RecA or RecB protein. Transformation of these strains with linearized plasmid DNA containing a 2-bp overhang has demonstrated that expression of both the Mt-Ku and Mt-Ligase D is required for DNA end-joining and that loss of RecA does not prevent this double-strand break repair. Analysis of the re-joined plasmid has shown that repair is predominantly inaccurate and results in the deletion of sequences. Loss of RecB did not prevent the formation of large deletions, but did increase the amount of end-joining. Sequencing the junctions has revealed that the majority of the ligations occurred at regions of micro-homology (1-4 bps), eliminating one copy of the homologous sequence at the junction. The Mt-Ku and Mt-Ligase D can therefore function in E. coli to re-circularize linear plasmid.

We previously established an Escherichia coli strain capable of re-circularizing linear plasmid DNA by expressing the Mycobacterium tuberculosis Ku (Mt-Ku) and Mycobacterium tuberculosis ligase D (Mt-LigD) proteins from the E.coli chromosome. Repair was predominately mutagenic due to deletions at the termini. We hypothesized that these deletions could be due to a nuclease activity of Mt-LigD that was previously detected in vitro. Mt-LigD has three domains: an N-terminal polymerase domain (PolDom), a central domain with 3'-phosphoesterase and nuclease activity and a C-terminal ligase domain (LigDom). We generated bacterial strains expressing Mt-Ku and mutant versions of Mt-LigD. Plasmid re-circularization experiments in bacteria showed that the PolDom alone had no re-circularization activity. However, an increase in the total and accurate repair was found when the central domain was deleted. This provides further evidence that this central domain does have nuclease activity that can generate deletions during repair. Deletion of only the PolDom of Mt-LigD resulted in a complete loss of accurate repair and a significant reduction in total repair. This is in agreement with published in vitro work indicating that the PolDom is the major Mt-Ku-binding site. Interestingly, the LigDom alone was able to re-circularize plasmid DNA but only in an Mt-Ku-dependent manner, suggesting a potential second site for Ku-LigD interaction. This work has increased our understanding of the mutagenic repair by Mt-Ku and Mt-LigD and has extended the in vitro biochemical experiments by examining the importance of the Mt-LigD domains during repair in bacteria.

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Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium smegmatis express a Ku protein and a DNA ligase D and are able to repair DNA double strand breaks (DSBs) by non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ). This pathway protects against DNA damage when bacteria are in stationary phase. Mycobacterium marinum is a member of this mycobacterium family and like M. tuberculosis is pathogenic. M. marinum lives in water, forms biofilms and infects fish and frogs. M. marinum is a biosafety level 2 (BSL2) organism as it can infect humans, although infections are limited to the skin. M. marinum is accepted as a model to study mycobacterial pathogenesis, as M. marinum and M. tuberculosis are genetically closely related and have similar mechanisms of survival and persistence inside macrophage. The aim of this study was to determine whether M. marinum could be used as a model to understand M. tuberculosis NHEJ repair. We identified and cloned the M. marinum genes encoding NHEJ proteins and generated E. coli strains that express the M. marinum Ku (Mm-Ku) and ligase D (Mm-Lig) individually or together (LHmKumLig strain) from expression vectors integrated at phage attachment sites in the genome. We demonstrated that Mm-Ku and Mm-Lig are both required to re-circularize Cla I-linearized plasmid DNA in E. coli. We compared repair of strain LHmKumLig with that of an E. coli strain (BWKuLig#2) expressing the M. tuberculosis Ku (Mt-Ku) and ligase D (Mt-Lig), and found that LHmKumLig performed 3.5 times more repair and repair was more accurate than BWKuLig#2. By expressing the Mm-Ku with the Mt-Lig, or the Mt-Ku with the Mm-Lig in E. coli, we have shown that the NHEJ proteins from M. marinum and M. tuberculosis can function together to join DNA DSBs. NHEJ repair is therefore conserved between the two species. Consequently, M. marinum is a good model to study NHEJ repair during mycobacterial pathogenesis.

Nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ) is the most efficient double-stranded DNA break (DSB) repair pathway in mammalian cells. In contrast, the protozoan parasite Leishmania has no functional NHEJ pathway but retains the core NHEJ factors of Ku70 and Ku80 proteins.