The stability of DNA ends generated by the HO endonuclease in yeast is surprisingly high with a half-life of more than an hour. This transient stability is unaffected by mutations that abolish nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ). The unprocessed ends interact with Yku70p and Yku80p, two proteins required for NHEJ, but not significantly with Rad52p, a protein involved in homologous recombination (HR). Repair of a double-strand break by NHEJ is unaffected by the possibility of HR, although the use of HR is increased in NHEJ-defective cells. Partial in vitro 5' strand processing suppresses NHEJ but not HR. These results show that NHEJ precedes HR temporally, and that the availability of substrate dictates the particular pathway used. We propose that transient stability of DNA ends is a foundation for the permanent stability of telomeres.

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Progesterone-induced meiotic maturation of Xenopus oocytes requires the synthesis of new proteins, such as Mos and cyclin B. Synthesis of Mos is thought to be necessary and sufficient for meiotic maturation; however, it has recently been proposed that newly synthesized proteins binding to p34 cdc2 could be involved in a signaling pathway that triggers the activation of maturation-promoting factor. We focused our attention on cyclin B proteins because they are synthesized in response to progesterone, they bind to p34 cdc2 , and their microinjection into resting oocytes induces meiotic maturation. We investigated cyclin B accumulation in response to progesterone in the absence of maturation-promoting factor-induced feedback. We report here that the cdk inhibitor p21 cip1 , when microinjected into immature Xenopus oocytes, blocks germinal vesicle breakdown induced by progesterone, by maturation-promoting factor transfer, or by injection of okadaic acid. After microinjection of p21 cip1 , progesterone fails to induce the activation of MAPK or p34 cdc2 , and Mos does not accumulate. In contrast, the level of cyclin B1 increases normally in a manner dependent on down-regulation of cAMP-dependent protein kinase but independent of cap-ribose methylation of mRNA.