The Importance of ATM and ATR in Physcomitrella patens DNA Damage Repair, Development, and Gene Targeting

Coordinated by ataxia-telangiectasia-mutated (ATM) and ATM and Rad3-related (ATR), two highly conserved kinases, DNA damage repair ensures genome integrity and survival in all organisms. The Arabidopsis thaliana (A. thaliana) orthologues are well characterized and exhibit typical mammalian characteristics. We mutated the Physcomitrella patens (P. patens) PpATM and PpATR genes by deleting functionally important domains using gene targeting. Both mutants showed growth abnormalities, indicating that these genes, particularly PpATR, are important for normal vegetative development. ATR was also required for repair of both direct and replication-coupled double-strand breaks (DSBs) and dominated the transcriptional response to direct DSBs, whereas ATM was far less important, as shown by assays assessing resistance to DSB induction and SuperSAGE-based transcriptomics focused on DNA damage repair genes. These characteristics differed significantly from the A. thaliana genes but resembled those in yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). PpATR was not important for gene targeting, pointing to differences in the regulation of gene targeting and direct DSB repair. Our analysis suggests that ATM and ATR functions can be substantially diverged between plants. The differences in ATM and ATR reflect the differences in DSB repair pathway choices between A. thaliana and P. patens, suggesting that they represent adaptations to different demands for the maintenance of genome stability.

Keywords: DNA damage repair; DNA recombination; Physcomitrella patens; development; double-strand break repair; evolution; gene targeting; phosphoinositide 3-kinase-related kinases; transcriptional control.