Non-canonical Roles of Telomerase: Unraveling the Imbroglio Evelyne Ségal-Bendirdjian, Vincent Geli To cite this version: Evelyne Ségal-Bendirdjian, Vincent Geli. Non-canonical Roles of Telomerase: Unraveling the Imbroglio. Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology, Frontiers media, 2019, 7, 10.3389/fcell.2019.00332. hal-03006249 HAL Id: hal-03006249 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03006249 Submitted on 15 Nov 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. fcell-07-00332 December 9, 2019 Time: 15:2 # 1 REVIEW published: 10 December 2019 doi: 10.3389/fcell.2019.00332 Non-canonical Roles of Telomerase: Unraveling the Imbroglio Evelyne Ségal-Bendirdjian1*† and Vincent Geli2*† 1 INSERM UMR-S 1124, Team: Cellular Homeostasis, Cancer and Therapies, INSERM US36, CNRS UMS 2009, BioMedTech Facilities, Université de Paris, Paris, France, 2 Marseille Cancer Research Center, U1068 INSERM, UMR 7258 CNRS, Aix Marseille University, Institut Paoli-Calmettes, Equipe labellisée Ligue, Marseille, France Telomerase plays a critical role in stem cell function and tissue regeneration that depends on its ability to elongate telomeres. For nearly two decades, it turned out that TERT regulates a broad spectrum of functions including signal transduction, gene expression regulation, and protection against oxidative damage that are independent of its telomere elongation activity. These conclusions that were mainly obtained in cell lines overexpressing telomerase were further strengthened by in vivo models of ectopic Edited by: expression of telomerase or models of G1 TERT knockout mice without detectable Maria Luisa Cayuela, telomere dysfunction. However, the later models were questioned due to the presence Hospital Universitario Virgen de la C=− Arrixaca, Spain of aberrantly shortened telomere in the germline of the parents TERT that were −=− Reviewed by: used to create the G1 TERT mice. The physiological relevance of the functions Shang Li, associated with overexpressed telomerase raised also some concerns due to artifactual Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore situations and localizations and complications to quantify the level of TERT. Another Orit Uziel, concern with non-canonical functions of TERT was the difficulty to separate a direct Tel Aviv University, Israel TERT-related function from secondary effects. Despite these concerns, more and more *Correspondence: evidence accumulates for non-canonical roles of telomerase that are non-obligatory Evelyne Ségal-Bendirdjian [email protected] extra-telomeric. Here, we review these non-canonical roles of the TERT subunit of Vincent Geli telomerase. Also, we emphasize recent results that link TERT to mitochondria and [email protected] protection to reactive oxygen species suggesting a protective role of TERT in neurons. †These authors have contributed equally to this work Throughout this review, we dissect some controversies regarding the non-canonical functions of telomerase and provide some insights to explain these discrepancies. Specialty section: Finally, we discuss the importance of understanding these alternative functions of This article was submitted to Cell Growth and Division, telomerase for the development of anticancer strategies. a section of the journal Keywords: telomere, telomerase (TERT), signaling pathway, stem cell function, mitochondria Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology Received: 02 July 2019 INTRODUCTION Accepted: 27 November 2019 Published: 10 December 2019 Mammalian telomeres are specialized DNA and protein structures found at the very ends of Citation: 0 linear chromosomes. They consist of hexameric DNA 5 -TTAGGGn repeats associated with a Ségal-Bendirdjian E and Geli V specific shelterin complex of six proteins and are essential for chromosomal maintenance and (2019) Non-canonical Roles of Telomerase: Unraveling genomic stability (de Lange, 2018). Telomeres shorten when normal cells undergo each replication the Imbroglio. due to the “end replication problem,” resulting mostly from incomplete lagging-strand DNA Front. Cell Dev. Biol. 7:332. synthesis and the induction of exonucleolytic processing at the leading strand (Lingner et al., doi: 10.3389/fcell.2019.00332 1995; Faure et al., 2010; Lam et al., 2010; Wu et al., 2012). Telomere shortening is compensated Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology| www.frontiersin.org 1 December 2019| Volume 7| Article 332 fcell-07-00332 December 9, 2019 Time: 15:2 # 2 Ségal-Bendirdjian and Geli Non-canonical Roles of TERT by telomerase, a specialized ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complex El Hajj et al., 2018). This possibility of hTERT interaction that contains at least two major components and several with non-conventional partners (not only proteins but also accessory proteins (Shay and Wright, 2019). The first major RNAs) provides interesting new insights into extratelomeric component is a protein with reverse transcriptase (RT) activity, functions of telomerase. the human telomerase RT (hTERT). This enzyme extends the Indeed, in the last 15 years it appeared that telomerase telomeric DNA by adding short repetitive DNA sequences. The functions could not be restricted to telomeres and the list of other component is a functional RNA, the human telomerase telomere-unrelated functions progressively increased. Increasing RNA (hTR), which functions as a template to direct the synthesis studies reported a wider spectrum of telomerase functions of telomeric repeats by hTERT. The complex is associated including signal transduction pathways, gene expression with accessory proteins such as dyskerin (DKC1), telomerase regulation, and mitochondrial function with consequences on Cajal body protein 1 (TCAB1), non-histone chromosome control cell survival, proliferation, differentiation, migration, protein 2 (NHP2), nucleolar protein 10 (NOP10), and GAR1 and regeneration (Passos et al., 2007; Martinez and Blasco, 2011; RNP (GAR1). Telomerase homeostasis depends highly on the Chiodi and Mondello, 2012; Li and Tergaonkar, 2014; Zhou et al., coordinated regulation of telomerase RNP assembly, trafficking, 2014; Miwa and Saretzki, 2017). These non-canonical functions and recruitment to telomeres (Schmidt and Cech, 2015). of telomerase appear not only in mammals but have been also Telomerase is expressed in adult stem cells, including skin, discovered in zebrafish (Imamura et al., 2008; Alcaraz-Perez intestines, and hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells. Telomerase et al., 2014). However, even though evidence indicates that is transiently activated only in certain proliferating stem- telomerase elicits other functions, it is not excluded that some like cells, such as T cell upon activation. However, upon of the consequences associated with telomerase expression even differentiation, this transient activation goes off (Holt et al., if they are not related to telomerase elongation function, may be 1996; Greenberg et al., 1998). The mechanisms of this transient explained by functions at telomeres such as protective functions activation and subsequent repression upon differentiation or telomere chromatin regulation. Some of them necessitate the remained yet unknown. In cancer cells, the situation is different RT domain, while some are TR independent. In this review, since telomerase that counteracts telomere shortening and we briefly described the consequences of the critical shortening senescence is reactivated (Bodnar et al., 1998). Telomerase of telomeres and then summarize and discuss the proposed activation occurs in 85–90% of all human cancers (Kim et al., non-canonical roles of telomerase in particular in the context 1994; Shay and Bacchetti, 1997) while 10–15% of cancers of its reactivation in cancer. Since many excellent reviews have maintain their telomeres through a DNA recombination pathway been published on the extra-telomeric functions of TERT (Ding (named ALT for alternative lengthening of telomeres) (Bryan et al., 2013; Li and Tergaonkar, 2014; Saretzki, 2014; Maida and et al., 1997). Reactivation of telomerase activity is mainly Masutomi, 2015; Teichroeb et al., 2016; Romaniuk et al., 2019; dependent on the increased expression of the hTERT gene Yuan and Xu, 2019), the main purpose of this review will be to (Yamaguchi et al., 2003) that appears to be the limiting discuss some discrepancies found in the literature regarding the component in cancer cells for the formation of the active non-canonical functions of telomerase and discuss how can we enzyme. However, even though hTR is broadly expressed in explain these differences. normal cells (Feng et al., 1995), it is also often deregulated during tumorigenesis (Soder et al., 1997, 1998; Heine et al., 1998; Yamaguchi et al., 2003). Different estimations of the endogenous THE MANY FACES OF THE RESPONSE levels of hTR and hTERT protein and the assembled telomerase TO TELOMERE DYSFUNCTION RNP were reported (Yi et al., 2001; Cohen et al., 2007; Xi and Cech, 2014). However, telomerase quantification was hampered The main pathway in response to telomere erosion is the p53- by the difficulty