Genome-wide analysis of transcription-coupled repair reveals novel transcription events in Caenorhabditis elegans

Abstract

Bulky DNA adducts such as those induced by ultraviolet light are removed from the genomes of multicellular organisms by nucleotide excision repair, which occurs through two distinct mechanisms, global repair, requiring the DNA damage recognition-factor XPC (xeroderma pigmentosum complementation group C), and transcription-coupled repair (TCR), which does not. TCR is initiated when elongating RNA polymerase II encounters DNA damage, and thus analysis of genome-wide excision repair in XPC-mutants only repairing by TCR provides a unique opportunity to map transcription events missed by methods dependent on capturing RNA transcription products and thus limited by their stability and/or modifications (5’-capping or 3’-polyadenylation). Here, we have performed eXcision Repair-sequencing (XR-seq) in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans to generate genome-wide repair maps in a wild-type strain with normal excision repair, a strain lacking TCR (csb-1), and a strain that only repairs by TCR (xpc-1). Analysis of the intersections between the xpc-1 XR-seq repair maps with RNA-mapping datasets (RNA-seq, long- and short-capped RNA-seq) reveal previously unrecognized sites of transcription and further enhance our understanding of the genome of this important model organism.