Transposition of yeast mating type genes from two translocations of the left arm of chromosome III

Mating-type gene switching in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Saccharomyces cerevisiae can change its mating type as often as every generation by a highly choreographed, site-specific recombination event that replaces one MAT allele with different DNA sequences encoding the opposite allele. The study of this process has yielded important insights into the control of cell lineage, the silencing of gene expression, and the formation of heterochromatin, as well as the molecular events of double-strand break-induced recombination. In addition, MAT switching provides a remarkable example of a small locus control region--the Recombination Enhancer--that controls recombination along an entire chromosome arm.

Perturbation of nuclear architecture by long-distance chromosome interactions

SUMMARY

Position-effect variegation (PEV) describes the stochastic transcriptional silencing of a gene positioned adjacent to heterochromatin. Using FISH, we have tested whether variegated expression of the eye-color gene brown in Drosophila is influenced by its nuclear localization. In embryonic nuclei, a heterochromatic insertion at the brown locus is always spatially isolated from other heterochromatin. However, during larval development this insertion physically associates with other heterochromatic regions on the same chromosome in a stochastic manner. These observations indicate that the brown gene is silenced by specific contact with centromeric heterochromatin. Moreover, they provide direct evidence for long-range chromosome interactions and their impact on three-dimensional nuclear architecture, while providing a cohesive explanation for the phenomenon of PEV.

Mutations affecting donor preference during mating type interconversion in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Homothallic strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae can convert mating type from a to alpha or alpha to a as often as every generation, by replacing genetic information specifying one mating type at the expressor locus, MAT, with information specifying the opposite mating type. The cryptic mating type information that is copied and inserted at MAT is contained in either of two loci, HML or HMR. The particular locus selected as donor during mating type interconversion is regulated by the allele expressed at MAT. MATa cells usually select HML, and MAT alpha cells usually select HMR, a process referred to as donor preference. To identify factors required for donor preference, we isolated and characterized a number of mutants that frequently selected the nonpreferred donor locus during mating type interconversion. Many of these mutants were found to harbor chromosome rearrangements or mutations at MAT or HML that interfered with the switching process. However, one mutant carried a recessive allele of CHL1, a gene previously shown to be required for efficient chromosome segregation during mitosis. Homothallic strains of yeast containing a null allele of CHL1 exhibited almost random selection of the donor locus in a MATa background but were normal in their ability to select HMR in a MAT alpha background. Our results indicate that Chl1p participates in the process of donor selection and are consistent with a model in which Chl1p helps establish an intrinsic bias in donor preference.

Donor locus selection during Saccharomyces cerevisiae mating type interconversion responds to distant regulatory signals

Mating type interconversion in homothallic strains of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae results from directed transposition of a mating type allele from one of the two silent donor loci, HML and HMR, to the expressing locus, MAT. Cell type regulates the selection of the particular donor locus to be utilized during mating type interconversion: MATa cells preferentially select HML alpha and MAT alpha cells preferentially select HMRa. Such preferential selection indicates that the cell is able to distinguish between HML and HMR during mating type interconversion. Accordingly, we designed experiments to identify those features perceived by the cell to discriminate HML and HMR. We demonstrate that discrimination does not derive from the different structures of the HML and HMR loci, from the unique sequences flanking each donor locus nor from any of the DNA distal to the HM loci on chromosome III. Moreover, we find that the sequences flanking the MAT locus do not function in the preferential selection of one donor locus over the other. We propose that the positions of the donor loci on the left and right arms of chromosome III is the characteristic utilized by the cell to distinguish HML and HMR. This positional information is not generated by either CEN3 or the MAT locus, but probably derives from differences in the chromatin structure, chromosome folding or intranuclear localization of the two ends of chromosome III.