Research

A genome wide analysis of the response to uncapped telomeres in budding yeast reveals a novel role for the NAD⁺ biosynthetic gene BNA2 in chromosome end protection

Amanda Greenall^1,2 , Guiyuan Lei^2,3 , Daniel C Swan⁴ , Katherine James^2,5 , Liming Wang⁶ , Heiko Peters⁶ , Anil Wipat^2,5 , Darren J Wilkinson^2,3 and David Lydall^1,2,7

¹  Aging Research Laboratories, Institute for Aging and Health, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 5PL, UK

²  Centre for Integrated Systems Biology of Aging and Nutrition, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 5PL, UK

³  School of Mathematics & Statistics, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK

⁴  Bioinformatics Support Unit, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 4HH, UK

⁵  Institute of Human Genetics, International Centre for Life, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 3BZ, UK

⁶  School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK

⁷  Institute for Cell and Molecular Biosciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 4HH, UK

author email corresponding author email

Genome Biology 2008, 9:R146doi:10.1186/gb-2008-9-10-r146

Published:	1 October 2008

Subject areas: Biochemistry and structural biology, Cancer, Molecular biology

Abstract

Background

Telomeres prevent the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes from being recognized as damaged DNA and protect against cancer and ageing. When telomere structure is perturbed, a co-ordinated series of events promote arrest of the cell cycle so that cells carrying damaged telomeres do not divide. In order to better understand the eukaryotic response to telomere damage, budding yeast strains harboring a temperature sensitive allele of an essential telomere capping gene (cdc13-1) were subjected to a transcriptomic study.

Results

The genome-wide response to uncapped telomeres in yeast cdc13-1 strains, which have telomere capping defects at temperatures above approximately 27°C, was determined. Telomere uncapping in cdc13-1 strains is associated with the differential expression of over 600 transcripts. Transcripts affecting responses to DNA damage and diverse environmental stresses were statistically over-represented. BNA2, required for the biosynthesis of NAD⁺, is highly and significantly up-regulated upon telomere uncapping in cdc13-1 strains. We find that deletion of BNA2 and NPT1, which is also involved in NAD⁺ synthesis, suppresses the temperature sensitivity of cdc13-1 strains, indicating that NAD⁺ metabolism may be linked to telomere end protection.

Conclusions

Our data support the hypothesis that the response to telomere uncapping is related to, but distinct from, the response to non-telomeric double-strand breaks. The induction of environmental stress responses may be a conserved feature of the eukaryotic response to telomere damage. BNA2, which is involved in NAD⁺ synthesis, plays previously unidentified roles in the cellular response to telomere uncapping.