Joachim J. Li

Here a method is described to identify genes encoding proteins that recognize a specific DNA sequence. A bank of random protein segments tagged with a transcriptional activation domain is screened for proteins that can activate a reporter gene containing the sequence in its promoter. This strategy was used to identify an essential protein that interacts in vivo with the yeast origin of DNA replication. Matches between its predicted amino acid sequence and peptide sequence obtained from the 50-kilodalton subunit of the yeast origin recognition complex (ORC) established that the gene isolated here, ORC6, encodes this subunit. These observations provide evidence that ORC recognizes yeast replication origins in vivo.

We have devised a genetic screen, termed synthetic dosage lethality, in which a cloned "reference" gene is inducibly overexpressed in a set of mutant strains carrying potential "target" mutations. To test the specificity of the method, two reference genes, CTF13, encoding a centromere binding protein, and ORC6, encoding a subunit of the origin of replication binding complex, were overexpressed in a large collection of mutants defective in either chromosome segregation or replication. CTF13 overexpression caused synthetic dosage lethality in combination with ctf14-42 (cbf2, ndc10), ctf17-61 (chl4), ctf19-58 and ctf19-26. ORC6 overexpression caused synthetic dosage lethality in combination with cdc2-1, cdc6-1, cdc14-1, cdc16-1 and cdc46-1. These relationships reflect specific interactions, as overexpression of CTF13 caused lethality in kinetochore mutants and overexpression of ORC6 caused lethality in replication mutants. In contrast, only one case of dosage suppression was observed. We suggest that synthetic dosage lethality identifies a broad spectrum of interacting mutations and is of general utility in detecting specific genetic interactions using a cloned wild-type gene as a starting point. Furthermore, synthetic dosage lethality is easily adapted to the study of cloned genes in other organisms.

Eukaryotic cells use numerous mechanisms to ensure that no segment of their DNA is inappropriately re-replicated, but the importance of this stringent control on genome stability has not been tested. Here we show that re-replication in Saccharomyces cerevisiae can strongly induce the initial step of gene amplification, increasing gene copy number from one to two or more. The resulting amplicons consist of large internal chromosomal segments that are bounded by Ty repetitive elements and are intrachromosomally arrayed at their endogenous locus in direct head-to-tail orientation. These re-replication-induced gene amplifications are mediated by nonallelic homologous recombination between the repetitive elements. We suggest that re-replication may be a contributor to gene copy number changes, which are important in fields such as cancer biology, evolution, and human genetics.