The fork protection complex promotes parental histone recycling and epigenetic memory

Sebastian Jespersen Charlton, Valentin Flury, Yutaka Kanoh, Aitana Victoria Genzor, Leonie Kollenstart, Wantong Ao, Peter Brøgger, Melanie Bianca Weisser, Marek Adamus, Nicolas Alcaraz, Charlotte M. Delvaux de Fenffe, Francesca Mattiroli, Guillermo Montoya, Hisao Masai, Anja Groth*, Geneviève Thon*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

    Abstract

    The inheritance of parental histones across the replication fork is thought to mediate epigenetic memory. Here, we reveal that fission yeast Mrc1 (CLASPIN in humans) binds H3-H4 tetramers and operates as a central coordinator of symmetric parental histone inheritance. Mrc1 mutants in a key connector domain disrupted segregation of parental histones to the lagging strand comparable to Mcm2 histone-binding mutants. Both mutants showed clonal and asymmetric loss of H3K9me-mediated gene silencing. AlphaFold predicted co-chaperoning of H3-H4 tetramers by Mrc1 and Mcm2, with the Mrc1 connector domain bridging histone and Mcm2 binding. Biochemical and functional analysis validated this model and revealed a duality in Mrc1 function: disabling histone binding in the connector domain disrupted lagging-strand recycling while another histone-binding mutation impaired leading strand recycling. We propose that Mrc1 toggles histones between the lagging and leading strand recycling pathways, in part by intra-replisome co-chaperoning, to ensure epigenetic transmission to both daughter cells.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)5029-5047.e21
    Number of pages19
    JournalCell
    Volume187
    Issue number18
    Early online date1 Aug 2024
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Sept 2024

    Keywords

    • chromatin replication
    • Claspin
    • DNA replication
    • epigenetic inheritance
    • epigenome maintenance
    • fission yeast
    • H3K9 methylation
    • heterochromatin
    • histone chaperone
    • histone recycling
    • mouse embryonic stem cells

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