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In Escherichia coli, several enzymes have been identified that participate in completing replication on the chromosome, including RecG, SbcCD, ExoI, and RecBCD. However, other enzymes are likely to be involved and the precise enzymatic mechanism by which this reaction occurs remains unknown. Two steps predicted to be necessary to complete replication are removal of Okazaki RNA fragments and ligation of the nascent strands at convergent replication forks. E. coli encodes two RNases that remove RNA-DNA hybrids, rnhA and rnhB, as well as two ligases, ligA and ligB. Here, we used replication profiling to show that rnhA and ligA, encoding RNase HI and Ligase A, participate in the completion reaction. Deletion of rnhA impaired the ability to complete replication and resulted in over-replication in the terminus region. It additionally suppressed initiation events from oriC, suggesting a role for the enzyme in oriC-dependent initiation, as has been suggested previously. We also show that a temperature-sensitive mutation in Ligase A led to over-replication at sites where replication completes, and that degradation at these sites occurred upon shifting to the nonpermissive temperature. Deletion of rnhB or ligB did not affect the growth or profile of replication on the genome.
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RnhP is a plasmid‐borne RNase HI that contributes to genome maintenance in the ancestral strain Bacillus subtilis NCIB 3610
Abstract RNA‐DNA hybrids form throughout the chromosome during normal growth and under stress conditions. When left unresolved, RNA‐DNA hybrids can slow replication fork progression, cause DNA breaks, and increase mutagenesis. To remove hybrids, all organisms use ribonuclease H (RNase H) to specifically degrade the RNA portion. Here we show that, in addition to chromosomally encoded RNase HII and RNase HIII,Bacillus subtilisNCIB 3610 encodes a previously uncharacterized RNase HI protein, RnhP, on the endogenous plasmid pBS32. Like other RNase HI enzymes, RnhP incises Okazaki fragments, ribopatches, and a complementary RNA‐DNA hybrid. We show that while chromosomally encoded RNase HIII is required for pBS32 hyper‐replication, RnhP compensates for the loss of RNase HIII activity on the chromosome. Consequently, loss of RnhP and RNase HIII impairs bacterial growth. We show that the decreased growth rate can be explained by laggard replication fork progression near the terminus region of the right replichore, resulting in SOS induction and inhibition of cell division. We conclude that all three functional RNase H enzymes are present inB. subtilisNCIB 3610 and that the plasmid‐encoded RNase HI contributes to chromosome stability, while the chromosomally encoded RNase HIII is important for chromosome stability and plasmid hyper‐replication.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1714539
- PAR ID:
- 10450217
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Molecular Microbiology
- Volume:
- 115
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0950-382X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 99-115
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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