Genetics: Early Online, published on April 13, 2018 as 10.1534/genetics.118.300923 Chakraborty et al. 1 Genomic Instability Promoted by Overexpression of Mismatch Repair Factors in Yeast: A Model for Understanding Cancer Progression Ujani Chakraborty*, Timothy A. Dinh+, and Eric Alani* *Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America +Curriculum in Genetics & Molecular Biology, Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC Key words: DNA mismatch repair, Msh2-Msh6 and Msh6 overexpression, heteroduplex rejection, Sgs1, PCNA. Corresponding Author: Eric Alani, Cornell University, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, 459 Biotechnology Building, Ithaca, NY 14853-2703, United States of America E-mail:
[email protected] Tel: 607-254-4811 Running title: Overexpression of MSH proteins confers genome instability Copyright 2018. Chakraborty et al. 2 Abstract Mismatch repair (MMR) proteins act in spellchecker roles to excise misincorporation errors that occur during DNA replication. Curiously, large-scale analyses of a variety of cancers showed that increased expression of MMR proteins often correlated with tumor aggressiveness, metastasis, and early recurrence. To better understand these observations, we used the TCGA and GENT databases to analyze MMR protein expression in cancers. We found that the MMR genes MSH2 and MSH6 are overexpressed more frequently than MSH3, and that MSH2 and MSH6 are often co-overexpressed as a result of copy number amplifications of these genes. These observations encouraged us to test the effects of upregulating MMR protein levels in baker’s yeast, where we can sensitively monitor genome instability phenotypes associated with cancer initiation and progression.