Telomerase core components protect Candida telomeres from aberrant overhang accumulation

摘要: Telomerase is a cellular reverse transcriptase that extends one strand (the G-strand) of the telomere terminal repeats. Aside from this role in length maintenance, telomerase has been proposed to serve protective function at chromosome ends, although not well understood mechanistically. Earlier analysis suggests that, pathogenic yeast Candida albicans, catalytic subunit (TERT/EST2) can protect telomeres against nucleolytic degradation. In report we demonstrate RNA component (TER1) similar function; addition complete loss activity and progressive attrition, ter1-ΔΔ strains manifested dramatic increase amount G-strand overhangs, consistent with aberrant degradation complementary C-strand. We also catalytically incompetent EST2 protein suppress such overhang accumulation est2-ΔΔ mutant same extent as wild-type protein. Altogether, our data support notion core components mediate through mechanism independent its activity.