An Essential Role for the Saccharomyces cerevisiae DEAD-Box Helicase DHH1 in G1/S DNA-Damage Checkpoint Recovery

Corresponding author: Joseph C. Reese, Penn State University, 203 Althouse Lab, University Park, PA 16802., jcr8{at}psu.edu (E-mail)

Communicating editor: F. WINSTON

The eukaryotic cell cycle displays a degree of plasticity in its regulation; cell cycle progression can be transiently arrested in response to environmental stresses. While the signaling pathways leading to cell cycle arrest are beginning to be well understood, the regulation of the release from arrest has not been well characterized. Here we show that DHH1, encoding a DEAD-box RNA helicase orthologous to the human putative proto-oncogene p54/RCK, is important in release from DNA-damage-induced cell cycle arrest at the G1/S checkpoint. DHH1 mutants are not defective for DNA repair and recover normally from the G2/M and replication checkpoints, suggesting a specific function for Dhh1p in recovery from G1/S checkpoint arrest. Dhh1p has been suggested to play a role in partitioning mRNAs between translatable and nontranslatable pools, and our results implicate this modulation of mRNA metabolism in the recovery from G1/S cell cycle arrest following DNA damage. Furthermore, the high degree of conservation between DHH1 and its human ortholog suggests that this mechanism is conserved among all eukaryotes and potentially important in human disease.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				L. Li, E. A. Monckton, and R. Godbout A Role for DEAD Box 1 at DNA Double-Strand Breaks Mol. Cell. Biol., October 15, 2008; 28(20): 6413 - 6425. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				I. Alves-Rodrigues, A. Mas, and J. Diez Xenopus Xp54 and Human RCK/p54 Helicases Functionally Replace Yeast Dhh1p in Brome Mosaic Virus RNA Replication J. Virol., April 15, 2007; 81(8): 4378 - 4380. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				Y.-U. Park, H. Hur, M. Ka, and J. Kim Identification of Translational Regulation Target Genes during Filamentous Growth in Saccharomyces cerevisiae: Regulatory Role of Caf20 and Dhh1 Eukaryot. Cell, December 1, 2006; 5(12): 2120 - 2127. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				A. Weston and J. Sommerville Xp54 and related (DDX6-like) RNA helicases: roles in messenger RNP assembly, translation regulation and RNA degradation Nucleic Acids Res., June 14, 2006; 34(10): 3082 - 3094. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				T. Matsui, K. Hogetsu, J. Usukura, T. Sato, T. Kumasaka, Y. Akao, and N. Tanaka Structural insight of human DEAD-box protein rck/p54 into its substrate recognition with conformational changes Genes Cells, April 1, 2006; 11(4): 439 - 452. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]