Studying Meiotic Cohesin in Somatic Cells Reveals That Rec8-Containing
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© 2018. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd | Journal of Cell Science (2018) 131, jcs212100. doi:10.1242/jcs.212100 SHORT REPORT Studying meiotic cohesin in somatic cells reveals that Rec8- containing cohesin requires Stag3 to function and is regulated by Wapl and sororin Peter G. Wolf*, Alexander Cuba Ramos, Julia Kenzel, Brigitte Neumann and Olaf Stemmann ABSTRACT when phosphorylation inactivates sororin (Dreier et al., 2011; Hauf The DNA-embracing, ring-shaped multiprotein complex cohesin et al., 2005; Liu et al., 2013). A small pool of cohesin, however, is mediates sister chromatid cohesion and is stepwise displaced in resistant to this so-called prophase pathway signalling. At mitosis by Wapl and separase (also known as ESPL1) to facilitate centromeres, shugoshin 1 (Sgo1) recruits the protein phosphatase anaphase. Proper regulation of chromosome cohesion throughout 2A (PP2A) to keep sororin active by means of dephosphorylation meiosis is critical for preventing formation of aneuploid gametes, (Liu et al., 2013; McGuinness et al., 2005; Tang et al., 2006). which are associated with trisomies and infertility in humans. Centromeric cohesion is resolved in anaphase when separase (also Studying cohesion in meiocytes is complicated by their difficult known as ESPL1) cleaves Scc1 from the remaining chromosomal experimental amenability and the absence of cohesin turnover. Here, cohesin (Hauf et al., 2001). we use cultured somatic cells to unravel fundamental aspects of In a prototypic meiosis, recombination events between non-sister meiotic cohesin. When expressed in Hek293 cells, the kleisin Rec8 chromatids create bivalents, in which the homologous displays no affinity for the peripheral cohesin subunits Stag1 or Stag2 chromosomes are held together by cohesin on chromosome arms and remains cytoplasmic. However, co-expression of Stag3 is located distally to crossovers. Segregation of homologous sufficient for Rec8 to enter the nucleus, load onto chromatin, and chromosomes in meiosis I is achieved by selective loss of cohesin functionally replace its mitotic counterpart Scc1 (also known as at chromosome arms. In the second meiotic division, cohesion is RAD21) during sister chromatid cohesion and dissolution. Rec8– resolved at the centromeres allowing the disjunction of sister Stag3 cohesin physically interacts with Pds5, Wapl and sororin (also chromatids. Interestingly, both waves of cohesin removal depend on known as CDCA5). Importantly, Rec8–Stag3 cohesin is shown to be separase activity. However, centromeric cohesion is maintained susceptible to Wapl-dependent ring opening and sororin-mediated during meiosis I because (1) Scc1 is functionally replaced by Rec8, protection. These findings exemplify that our model system is suitable which is different from its mitotic counterpart in that it must be to rapidly generate testable predictions for important unresolved phosphorylated in order to be cleaved by separase (Kudo et al., issues of meiotic cohesion regulation. 2009; Riedel et al., 2006) and (2) Sgo2, which replaces Sgo1 in mammalian meiosis, recruits PP2A to keep centromeric Rec8 in a KEY WORDS: Meiosis, Cohesin, Rec8, Stag3, Wapl, Sororin dephosphorylated state (Lee et al., 2008; Llano et al., 2008). An unresolved question is whether Sgo1 is only competent to INTRODUCTION protect Scc1 cohesin from the prophase pathway and whether, Cohesin is a multiprotein complex that provides sister chromatid conversely, Sgo2 might only shield Rec8 cohesin from separase. cohesion by embracing both DNA copies in its middle. In In addition to Stag1 and Stag2, germ cells contain a third variant mitotically dividing cells, an Smc1α–Smc3 heterodimer named Stag3 (Prieto et al., 2001). Furthermore, vertebrate meiocytes associates with the kleisin subunit Scc1 (also known as RAD21) express two variants of Smc1, Smc1α and the meiosis-specific forming a tripartite ring. Human somatic cells express two Smc1β (Revenkova et al., 2001; Revenkova et al., 2004). Which of variants of a fourth subunit, Stag1 and Stag2, which bind Scc1 in the possible combinations of cohesin subunits actually exist in germ a mutually exclusive manner (Nasmyth, 2011; Nasmyth and cells is controversial (Ishiguro et al., 2011; Lee and Hirano, 2011; Haering, 2009). Revenkova et al., 2004). Moreover, while it is clear that Rec8 is Vertebrate cohesin is loaded in telophase but is constantly crucial for cohesion in meiocytes (Tachibana-Konwalski et al., 2010), removed from chromatin owing to the action of Wapl (Gandhi et al., whether and which other meiosis-specific cohesin subunits are 2006; Kueng et al., 2006), until S phase when a pool of cohesin is essential for cohesion still needs clarification. Wapl is expressed stabilised by the Wapl antagonist sororin (also known as CDCA5) during meiosis, and mutant spermatocytes with dysregulated Wapl (Nishiyama et al., 2010; Rankin et al., 2005). In early mitosis, Wapl- exhibit increased chromosomal Smc3 levels (Brieño-Enríquez et al., dependent removal of cohesin from chromosome arms is boosted 2016; Kuroda et al., 2005). However, whether the Rec8 cohesin is responsive to Wapl-dependent ring opening remains enigmatic. Here, we exploit somatic cells to study human meiotic cohesin Chair of Genetics, University of Bayreuth, Universitätsstraße 30, 95440 Bayreuth, subunits and reveal the following: (1) Rec8 does not interact with Germany. Stag1 or Stag2 but robustly associates with Stag3 and becomes *Author for correspondence ([email protected]) functional (i.e. loaded onto chromatin and cohesive) only in presence of this meiosis-specific cohesin subunit; (2) Rec8 cohesin P.G.W., 0000-0002-2273-676X; A.C., 0000-0002-3630-1011; J.K., 0000-0002- 1094-3876; B.N., 0000-0002-2621-3851 physically interacts with and is regulated by sororin and its antagonist Wapl; (3) Sgo1 and Sgo2 are indeed specific for Received 17 October 2017; Accepted 26 April 2018 distinct cohesin complexes as specified by the kleisin subunit. Journal of Cell Science 1 SHORT REPORT Journal of Cell Science (2018) 131, jcs212100. doi:10.1242/jcs.212100 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION We generated transgenic Hek293 cell lines inducibly expressing C-terminally GFP-tagged Rec8 or, as a control, Scc1 and compared the cellular localisation of both fusion proteins. Notably, in all clones analysed the levels of Scc1–GFP were lower than Rec8–GFP (data not shown) consistent with previous experiments indicating that cells try to keep a constant level of Scc1 (Schöckel et al., 2011). Consistent with a recent report (Rong et al., 2017), we found that Rec8, in contrast to Scc1, was excluded from the nucleus (Fig. 1A). We reasoned that another meiosis-specific cohesin subunit might be necessary for the nuclear targeting of Rec8. First, we asked whether Rec8 is competent to associate with all non-kleisin subunits of the somatic cohesin complex. Immunoprecipitation (IP) experiments revealed a robust interaction of Rec8 with Smc3 and Smc1α (Fig. 1B). Interestingly, studies conducted in spermatocytes revealed an association of Rec8 only with Smc1β and not with Smc1α (Ishiguro et al., 2011; Lee and Hirano, 2011). Importantly, endogenous Stag1 and Stag2, while readily co-purifying with Scc1, failed to co-IP with Rec8 (Fig. 1C; Fig. S1A). We directly compared transiently expressed Flag-tagged Stag2 and Stag3 in their ability to associate with Rec8 and confirmed that only Stag3, and not Stag2, exhibited a strong interaction with the kleisin (Fig. 2A). Moreover, Stag3 changed the localisation of Rec8 from the cytoplasm to the nucleus, while ectopic expression of Stag2 had no such effect (Fig. 2B–D; Fig. S2A,B). In addition, the nuclear Rec8–GFP signal became resistant to preextraction in presence of Stag3, indicating that Rec8 is also loaded onto chromatin in a Stag3-dependent manner. Stag3 triggered this effect irrespectively of its expression from a transiently transfected plasmid (Fig. S2A,B) or a genomically integrated transgene (Fig. 2B–D). Rec8 behaved the same in these kinds of experiments with both a C-terminal GFP tag and an N-terminal Myc5 tag indicating that the tag did not affect kleisin localisation (Fig. S2C,D). Taken together, our data suggest that Rec8 might only be functional when assembled in a cohesin complex that also contains Stag3. Although some somatic cell types express Smc1β (Mannini et al., 2015), we could not detect any Smc1β transcript as judged by means of a PCR on isolated cDNA (Fig. S1B). Rigorous testing of whether Rec8-containing cohesin can mediate cohesion in somatic cells requires abrogation of Scc1 cohesin function. In our hands, the knockdown of SCC1 was incomplete and did not result in a penetrant phenotype. Therefore, we used overexpression of hyperactive separase (Boos et al., 2008; Holland and Taylor, 2006) or depletion of Sgo1 (McGuinness et al., 2005; see further details below) as two independent and established methods to induce premature sister chromatid separation (SCS) in prometaphase cells. We then asked whether the cohesion defect could be rescued by presence of Stag3 and Rec8. First, parental Hek293 cells, cells expressing Rec8 with Stag2, and Rec8 with Stag3 were transfected to express hyperactive separase and arrested with nocodazole treatment. Subsequent chromosome spreading revealed untimely SCS in an average of 31% of the cells without the transgene or with REC8 and STAG2 (Fig. 3A; lanes 2 and 3; Fig. S3A), which represents a fivefold increase relative to control cells (lane 1). Importantly, precocious Fig. 1. Rec8 interacts with