Visualization of Replisome Encounters with an Antigen Tagged Blocking Lesion

Summary

While replication fork collisions with DNA adducts can induce double strand breaks, less is known about the interaction between replisomes and blocking lesions. We have employed the proximity ligation assay to visualize these encounters and to characterize the consequences for replisome composition.

Abstract

Considerable insight is present into the cellular response to double strand breaks (DSBs), induced by nucleases, radiation, and other DNA breakers. In part, this reflects the availability of methods for the identification of break sites, and characterization of factors recruited to DSBs at those sequences. However, DSBs also appear as intermediates during the processing of DNA adducts formed by compounds that do not directly cause breaks, and do not react at specific sequence sites. Consequently, for most of these agents, technologies that permit the analysis of binding interactions with response factors and repair proteins are unknown. For example, DNA interstrand crosslinks (ICLs) can provoke breaks following replication fork encounters. Although formed by drugs widely used as cancer chemotherapeutics, there has been no methodology for monitoring their interactions with replication proteins.

Here, we describe our strategy for following the cellular response to fork collisions with these challenging adducts. We linked a steroid antigen to psoralen, which forms photoactivation dependent ICLs in nuclei of living cells. The ICLs were visualized by immunofluorescence against the antigen tag. The tag can also be a partner in the Proximity Ligation Assay (PLA) which reports the close association of two antigens. The PLA was exploited to distinguish proteins that were closely associated with the tagged ICLs from those that were not. It was possible to define replisome proteins that were retained after encounters with ICLs and identify others that were lost. This approach is applicable to any structure or DNA adduct that can be detected immunologically.

Introduction

The cellular response to double strand breaks is well documented owing to a succession of increasingly powerful methods for directing breaks to specific genomic sites^1,2,3. The certainty of location enables unambiguous characterization of proteins and other factors that accumulate at the site and participate in the DNA Damage Response (DDR) thereby driving the Non-Homologous End Joining (NHEJ) and Homologous Recombination (HR) pathways that repair breaks. Of course, many breaks are introduced by agents such as radiation and chemical species that do not attack specific sequenc....

Protocol

1. Cell preparation

1. Day 1
   1. Pre-treat 35 mm glass-bottomed culture dishes with a cell adhesive solution.
   2. Plate cells in the pre-treated dishes one day before treatment. Cell should be actively dividing and 50–70% confluent on the day of the experiment.
      NOTE: HeLa cells were used in this experiment with Dulbecco Modified Eagle Medium DMEM, supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum, 1x penicillin /streptomycin. There is no restriction for adherent cell lines. However, non-adherent cells must be centrifuged onto slides and fixed prior to the analysis by PLA.
2. Day 2
   1. Prepare a stock solution of Digoxi....

Results

PLA of Dig-TMP with replisome proteins
The structure of the Dig-TMP is shown in Figure 1. The details of the synthesis, in which trimethyl psoralen was conjugated through a glycol linker to digoxigenin, have been discussed previously^17,21. Incubation of cells with the compound followed by exposure to 365 nm light (UVA) photoactivates the compound and drives the crosslinking reaction. Slightly more than 90% of add.......

Discussion

Although the PLA is a very powerful technique, there are technical concerns that must be solved in order to obtain clear and reproducible results. The antibodies must be of high affinity and specificity. Furthermore, it is important to reduce the non-specific background signals as much as possible. We have found that membranes and cellular debris contribute to the background, and we have removed them as much as possible. The washes with detergent containing buffers prior to fixing, and the wash with methanol after fixing.......

Materials

List of materials used in this article

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
Alexa Fluor 568, Goat anti-Rabbit IgG (H+L) Cross-Adsorbed Secondary Antibody	Invitrogen	A-10011	1 in 1000
35 mm plates with glass 1.5 coverslip	MatTek	P35-1.5-14-C	Glass Bottom Microwell Dishes 35mm Petri Dish Microwell
Alexa Fluor 488,Goat anti-Mouse IgG (H+L) Cross-Adsorbed Secondary Antibody	Invitrogen	A-10001	1 in 1000
Bovine serum albumin (BSA)	SeraCare	1900-0012	Blocking solution, reagents need to be stored at 4 °C
CDC45 antibody (rabbit)	Abcam	ab126762	1 in 200
Cell adhesive	Life Science	354240	for cell-TAK solution
Confocal microscope	Nikkon	Nikon TE2000 spinning disk microscope	equiped with Volocity software
Digoxigenin (Dig) antibody (mouse)	Abcam	ab420	1 in 200
Dig-TMP	synthesized in the Seidman Lab
Duolink Amplification reagents (5×)	Sigma-Aldrich	DUO82010	reagents need to be stored at -20 °C
Duolink in situ detection reagents	Sigma-Aldrich	DUO92007	reagents need to be stored at -20 °C
Duolink in situ oligonucleotide PLA probe MINUS	Sigma-Aldrich	DUO92004	anti-mouse MINUS, reagents need to be stored at 4 °C
Duolink in situ oligonucleotide PLA probe PLUS	Sigma-Aldrich	DUO92002	anti-rabbit PLUS, reagents need to be stored at 4 °C
Duolink in situ wash buffer A	Sigma-Aldrich	DUO82046	Duolink Wash Buffers, reagents need to be stored at 4 °C
Duolink in situ wash buffer B	Sigma-Aldrich	DUO82048	Duolink Wash Buffers, reagents need to be stored at 4 °C
epifluorescent microscope	Zeiss	Axiovert 200M microscope	Equipped with the Axio Vision software packages (Zeiss, Germany)
Formaldehyde 16%	Fisher Scientific	PI28906	for fix solution
Goat serum	Thermo	31873	Blocking solution, reagents need to be stored at 4 °C
Image analysis software	open source	Cell profiler	works for analysis of single plane images
Image analysis software-license required	Bitplane	Imaris	Cell Biology module needed. Can quantify PLA dots/nuclei in image stacks (3D) and do 3D reconstructions
Ligase (1 unit/μl)	Sigma-Aldrich	DUO82029	reagents need to be stored at -20 °C
Ligation reagent (5×)	Sigma-Aldrich	DUO82009	reagents need to be stored at -20 °C
MCM2 antibody (rabbit)	Abcam	ab4461	1 in 200
MCM5 antibody (rabbit monoclonal)	Abcam	Ab75975	1 in 1000
Methanol	Lab ALLEY	A2076	pre-cold at -20°C before use
phosphoMCM2S108 antibody (rabbit)	Abcam	ab109271	1 in 200
Polymerase (10 unit/μl)	Sigma-Aldrich	DUO82030	reagents need to be stored at -20 °C
Prolong gold mounting media with DAPI	ThermoFisher Scientific	P36935
PSF1 antibody (rabbit)	Abcam	ab181112	1 in 200
RNAse A 100 mg/ml	Qiagen	19101	reagents need to be stored at 4 °C
Statistical analysis and data visualization software	open source	R studio	ggplot2 package for generation of dot plot and box plots
Statistical analysis and data visualization software-license required	Systat Software	Sigmaplot V13
TMP (trioxalen)	Sigma-Aldrich	T6137_1G
TritonX-100	Sigma-Aldrich	T8787_250ML
Tween 20	Sigma-Aldrich	P9416_100ML
UV box	Southern New England Ultraviolet		Discontinued. See Opsytec UV test chamber as a possible replacement
UV test Chamber	Opsytec	UV TEST CHAMBER BS-04
VE-821	Selleckchem	S8007	final concentrtion is 1µM