A 'parameiosis' drives depolyploidization and homologous recombination in Candida albicans.
Matthew Zack AndersonGregory J ThomsonMatthew P HirakawaRichard J BennettPublished in: Nature communications (2019)
Meiosis is a conserved tenet of sexual reproduction in eukaryotes, yet this program is seemingly absent from many extant species. In the human fungal pathogen Candida albicans, mating of diploid cells generates tetraploid products that return to the diploid state via a non-meiotic process of depolyploidization known as concerted chromosome loss (CCL). Here, we report that recombination rates are more than three orders of magnitude higher during CCL than during normal mitotic growth. Furthermore, two conserved 'meiosis-specific' factors play central roles in CCL as SPO11 mediates DNA double-strand break formation while both SPO11 and REC8 regulate chromosome stability and promote inter-homolog recombination. Unexpectedly, SPO11 also promotes DNA repair and recombination during normal mitotic divisions. These results indicate that C. albicans CCL represents a 'parameiosis' that blurs the conventional boundaries between mitosis and meiosis. They also reveal parallels with depolyploidization in mammalian cells and provide potential insights into the evolution of meiosis.
Keyphrases
- candida albicans
- dna repair
- dna damage
- liver fibrosis
- biofilm formation
- liver injury
- dna damage response
- drug induced
- induced apoptosis
- cell cycle
- endothelial cells
- transcription factor
- copy number
- genome wide
- oxidative stress
- cell free
- cystic fibrosis
- escherichia coli
- staphylococcus aureus
- pseudomonas aeruginosa
- gene expression
- risk assessment
- human health
- endoplasmic reticulum stress
- single cell
- climate change