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How Do Yeast and Other Fungi Recognize and Respond to Genome Perturbations?

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Stress Response Mechanisms in Fungi

Abstract

The integrity of a cellular genome may be endangered in many ways. However, cells are not powerless and indifferent to their future fate; they are prepared to solve various problems concerning their genome to enable their survival. Maintaining a stable genome is a complicated task, even without any external problems such as genotoxic agents, irradiation, or any other harmful treatment to which cells are exposed in their environment. Inaccuracies in replication alone may lead to changes in DNA sequence, i.e., to mutations. When cells are exposed to stressful conditions that cause DNA lesions, the frequency of mutations increases. Moreover, unrepaired DNA damage may lead to the replication fork block that delays the replication round until the damage is repaired. However, if for some reason the DNA damage in the replication fork remains unrepaired, it may lead to DNA breakage causing DNA rearrangements or to fork collapse followed by cell death. Consequently, DNA damage is dangerous for replicating cells. What happens when DNA damage appears after a replication round has been successfully finished? Various DNA lesions may disturb the transcription efficiency of the affected genes. DNA strand breaks may generate problems during chromosome segregation because such lesions may lead to an unequal DNA distribution to daughter cells.

The DNA lesions are generally unwanted; however, during certain phases of the cell cycle, some classes of damage can be particularly dangerous. Thus, cellular resources have to recognize this type of damage and adjust the DNA damage response not only to this particular damage but also to the actual cell cycle phase. Sometimes similar DNA lesions may require different remedies. As a result, cells have developed a complicated protein network to maintain the genome integrity. In this chapter, some of the solutions applied by yeast and other fungi in response to genotoxic challenges will be presented.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Polish National Science Center grant 2016/21/B/NZ3/03641.

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Correspondence to Adrianna Skoneczna .

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Skoneczna, A., Krol, K., Skoneczny, M. (2018). How Do Yeast and Other Fungi Recognize and Respond to Genome Perturbations?. In: Skoneczny, M. (eds) Stress Response Mechanisms in Fungi. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00683-9_3

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