Germany: CycG and p53 are required for DNA damage repair in Drosophila melanogaster

p53 and cyclin G cooperate in mediating genome stability in somatic cells of Drosophila

Fabienne E. Baye, Mirjam Zimmermann, Patrick Fischer¹, Christian Gromoll, Anette Preiss & Anja C. Nagel|Institut für Genetik, Universität Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany, Department of Medical Physics, Marien hospital Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany|Scientific Reports|2017|7:17890 DOI:10.1038/s41598-017-17973-z

Tumour suppressor gene p53 is an evolutionary conserved gene that plays a key role in mediating the adaptive response to a variety of stress signals that threaten cellular homeostasis. Previous studies have indicated that Drosophila melanogaster p53 might recruit different co-factors to fulfil specific activities in response to various stressors. It has been previously shown that Cyclin G (CycG) is involved in double-strand break repair during meiosis and mediating DNA damage response in somatic tissue in humans, and could be alike in Drosophila melanogaster. In this study, gene expression analysis using relative quantification of three biological and two technical replicates of three null alleles of cycG flies that were exposed to ionizing radiation treatment was performed on the Mic qPCR Cycler. The relative quantification was based on REST, taking target efficiency into account. The expression of a target gene is standardised by a non-regulated reference-genes, therefore containing more reference-genes than other relative quantification methods. CycG has been found in protein complexes together with p53 and physically interact in vitro and in vivo in response to ionizing radiation. The data in this study indicates that overexpression of p53 occur in CycG null mutants and p53 activity is impeded in CycG mutants. This shows that both p53 and CycG are both required for DNA damage repair in Drosophi