Structural basis of Ty1 integrase tethering to RNA polymerase III for targeted retrotransposon integration

RNA polymerase I (Pol I) transcribes ribosomal DNA (rDNA) to produce the rRNA precursor, which accounts for up to 60% of the total transcriptional activity in growing cells. Pol I monitors rDNA integrity and influences cell survival, but little is known about how this enzyme processes abasic DNA lesions. Here, we report electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) structures of Pol I at different stages of stalling at abasic sites, supported by in vitro transcription studies. Our results show that templating abasic sites can slow nucleotide addition by base sandwiching between the RNA 3’-end and the Pol I bridge helix. However, the presence of a templating abasic site induces opening of the Pol I cleft for either enzyme dissociation from DNA or for access of A12-Ct into the active site to stimulate RNA cleavage. Nucleotide addition opposite the lesion induces an early translocation intermediate that is different from previously-described RNA polymerase paused states, as DNA bases in the hybrid tilt to form hydrogen bonds with the newly-added RNA base. While in this state nucleotide addition is strongly disfavoured, intrinsic Pol I RNA cleavage activity acts as a failsafe mechanism to minimize lesion bypass. Our results uncover a two-step mechanism leading to persistent Pol I stalling after nucleotide addition opposite Ap sites, which is distinct from arrest by CPD lesions and from Pol II blockage at Ap sites.

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Reproducible evaluation of transposable element detectors with McClintock 2 guides accurate inference of Ty insertion patterns in yeast

Chen

Basting

Han

et al. 2023

Mobile DNA

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Background Many computational methods have been developed to detect non-reference transposable element (TE) insertions using short-read whole genome sequencing data. The diversity and complexity of such methods often present challenges to new users seeking to reproducibly install, execute, or evaluate multiple TE insertion detectors. Results We previously developed the McClintock meta-pipeline to facilitate the installation, execution, and evaluation of six first-generation short-read TE detectors. Here, we report a completely re-implemented version of McClintock written in Python using Snakemake and Conda that improves its installation, error handling, speed, stability, and extensibility. McClintock 2 now includes 12 short-read TE detectors, auxiliary pre-processing and analysis modules, interactive HTML reports, and a simulation framework to reproducibly evaluate the accuracy of component TE detectors. When applied to the model microbial eukaryote Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we find substantial variation in the ability of McClintock 2 components to identify the precise locations of non-reference TE insertions, with RelocaTE2 showing the highest recall and precision in simulated data. We find that RelocaTE2, TEMP, TEMP2 and TEBreak provide consistent estimates of $$\sim$$ ∼ 50 non-reference TE insertions per strain and that Ty2 has the highest number of non-reference TE insertions in a species-wide panel of $$\sim$$ ∼ 1000 yeast genomes. Finally, we show that best-in-class predictors for yeast applied to resequencing data have sufficient resolution to reveal a dyad pattern of integration in nucleosome-bound regions upstream of yeast tRNA genes for Ty1, Ty2, and Ty4, allowing us to extend knowledge about fine-scale target preferences revealed previously for experimentally-induced Ty1 insertions to spontaneous insertions for other copia-superfamily retrotransposons in yeast. Conclusion McClintock (https://github.com/bergmanlab/mcclintock/) provides a user-friendly pipeline for the identification of TEs in short-read WGS data using multiple TE detectors, which should benefit researchers studying TE insertion variation in a wide range of different organisms. Application of the improved McClintock system to simulated and empirical yeast genome data reveals best-in-class methods and novel biological insights for one of the most widely-studied model eukaryotes and provides a paradigm for evaluating and selecting non-reference TE detectors in other species.

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Structural basis of Ty1 integrase tethering to RNA polymerase III for targeted retrotransposon integration

Cited by 3 publications

References 58 publications

From parasites to partners: exploring the intricacies of host-transposon dynamics and coevolution

From parasites to partners: exploring the intricacies of host-transposon dynamics and coevolution

Cryo-EM uncovers a sequential mechanism for RNA polymerase I pausing and stalling at abasic DNA lesions

Reproducible evaluation of transposable element detectors with McClintock 2 guides accurate inference of Ty insertion patterns in yeast

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