Fanca deficiency reduces A/T transitions in somatic hypermutation and alters class switch recombination junctions in mouse B cells

TV Nguyen, L Riou, S Aoufouchi… - Journal of Experimental …, 2014 - rupress.org
TV Nguyen, L Riou, S Aoufouchi, F Rosselli
Journal of Experimental Medicine, 2014rupress.org
Fanconi anemia is a rare genetic disorder that can lead to bone marrow failure, congenital
abnormalities, and increased risk for leukemia and cancer. Cells with loss-of-function
mutations in the FANC pathway are characterized by chromosome fragility, altered
mutability, and abnormal regulation of the nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ) pathway.
Somatic hypermutation (SHM) and immunoglobulin (Ig) class switch recombination (CSR)
enable B cells to produce high-affinity antibodies of various isotypes. Both processes are …
Fanconi anemia is a rare genetic disorder that can lead to bone marrow failure, congenital abnormalities, and increased risk for leukemia and cancer. Cells with loss-of-function mutations in the FANC pathway are characterized by chromosome fragility, altered mutability, and abnormal regulation of the nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ) pathway. Somatic hypermutation (SHM) and immunoglobulin (Ig) class switch recombination (CSR) enable B cells to produce high-affinity antibodies of various isotypes. Both processes are initiated after the generation of dG:dU mismatches by activation-induced cytidine deaminase. Whereas SHM involves an error-prone repair process that introduces novel point mutations into the Ig gene, the mismatches generated during CSR are processed to create double-stranded breaks (DSBs) in DNA, which are then repaired by the NHEJ pathway. As several lines of evidence suggest a possible role for the FANC pathway in SHM and CSR, we analyzed both processes in B cells derived from Fanca−/− mice. Here we show that Fanca is required for the induction of transition mutations at A/T residues during SHM and that despite globally normal CSR function in splenic B cells, Fanca is required during CSR to stabilize duplexes between pairs of short microhomology regions, thereby impeding short-range recombination downstream of DSB formation.
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