SPR-5 is a histone H3K4 demethylase with a role in meiotic double-strand break repair.

Amanda C Nottke, Sara E Beese-Sims, Luiz F Pantalena, Valerie Reinke, Yang Shi, Monica P Colaiácovo

Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2011 Aug 2

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Regulation of histone methylation levels has long been implicated in multiple cellular processes, many of which involve transcription. Here, however, we report a unique role for the Caenorhabditis elegans histone demethylase SPR-5 in meiotic DNA double-strand break repair (DSBR). SPR-5 shows enzymatic activity toward H3K4me2 both in vitro and in the nematode germline, and spr-5 mutants show several phenotypes indicating a perturbation of DSBR, including increased p53-dependent germ cell apoptosis, increased levels of the DSBR marker RAD-51, and sensitivity toward DSB-inducing treatments. spr-5 mutants show no transcriptional misregulation of known DSBR involved genes. Instead, SPR-5 shows a rapid subcellular relocalization upon DSB-inducing treatment, which suggests that SPR-5 may function directly in DSBR.

Citation

Amanda C Nottke, Sara E Beese-Sims, Luiz F Pantalena, Valerie Reinke, Yang Shi, Monica P Colaiácovo. SPR-5 is a histone H3K4 demethylase with a role in meiotic double-strand break repair. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2011 Aug 2;108(31):12805-10