Genome-Wide Mapping of the Cohesin Complex in the Yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Abstract

In eukaryotic cells, cohesin holds sister chromatids together until they separate into daughter cells during mitosis. We have used chromatin immunoprecipitation coupled with microarray analysis (ChIP chip) to produce a genome-wide description of cohesin binding to meiotic and mitotic chromosomes of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. A computer program, PeakFinder, enables flexible, automated identification and annotation of cohesin binding peaks in ChIP chip data. Cohesin sites are highly conserved in meiosis and mitosis, suggesting that chromosomes share a common underlying structure during different developmental programs. These sites occur with a semiperiodic spacing of 11 kb that correlates with AT content. The number of sites correlates with chromosome size; however, binding to neighboring sites does not appear to be cooperative. We observed a very strong correlation between cohesin sites and regions between convergent transcription units. The apparent incompatibility between transcription and cohesin binding exists in both meiosis and mitosis. Further experiments reveal that transcript elongation into a cohesin-binding site removes cohesin. A negative correlation between cohesin sites and meiotic recombination sites suggests meiotic exchange is sensitive to the chromosome structure provided by cohesin. The genome-wide view of mitotic and meiotic cohesin binding provides an important framework for the exploration of cohesins and cohesion in other genomes.

Transcriptional homogenization of rDNA repeats in the episome-based nucleolus induces genome-wide changes in the chromosomal distribution of condensin

“…Only peaks based on at least two replicas were included. The graphs were produced using the PeakFinder application (Glynn et al, 2004). The PeakFinder output only shows the calculated maximum position (i.e.…”

Cohesins and condensins orchestrate the 4D dynamics of yeast chromosomes during the cell cycle

“…The evolutionary conserved structural maintenance of chromosomes (SMC) proteins bind to chromosomes and modify their structure in spatially and temporarily regulated manner during the cell cycle (Aragon et al , 2013; Uhlmann, 2016). Cohesins, such as Scc1, promote SC cohesion during DNA replication (Blat & Kleckner, 1999; Glynn et al , 2004) and get cleaved at the metaphase‐to‐anaphase transition (Uhlmann et al , 1999). At the same time, condensins such as Smc2 are loaded onto SCs to facilitate their segregation (Renshaw et al , 2010; Stephens et al , 2011; Hirano, 2012).…”

Association of cohesin and Nipped-B with transcriptionally active regions of the Drosophila melanogaster genome

“…The binding of cohesin and the Scc2 ortholog of Nipped-B have been mapped genome-wide in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Glynn et al 2004;Lengronne et al 2004). Cohesin binds almost exclusively between genes in yeast, and most binding sites are between convergent transcription units.…”

“…Cohesin binds almost exclusively between genes in yeast, and most binding sites are between convergent transcription units. Coupled with the finding that Scc2 does not colocalize with cohesin, this led to the idea that cohesin loads onto chromosomes at Scc2 binding sites and then is pushed to the ends of genes by RNA polymerase (Glynn et al 2004;Lengronne et al 2004). …”