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BIOINFORMATICS DISCOVERY NOTE
Vol. 27 no. 14 2011, pages 1885–1888
doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btr332
Sequence analysis Advance Access publication June 8, 2011
Cdc45: the missing RecJ ortholog in eukaryotes?
Luis Sanchez-Pulido∗ and Chris P. Ponting
Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, MRC Functional Genomics Unit, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1
3QX, UK
Associate Editor: Burkhard Rost
ABSTRACT
Summary: DNA replication is one of the most ancient of cellular
processes and functional similarities among its molecular machinery
are apparent across all cellular life. Cdc45 is one of the essential
components of the eukaryotic replication fork and is required for
the initiation and elongation of DNA replication, but its molecular
function is currently unknown. In order to trace its evolutionary history
and to identify functional domains, we embarked on a computational
sequence analysis of the Cdc45 protein family. Our ﬁndings reveal
eukaryotic Cdc45 and prokaryotic RecJ to possess a common
ancestry and Cdc45 to contain a catalytic site within a predicted
exonuclease domain. The likely orthology between Cdc45 and RecJ
reveals new lines of enquiry into DNA replication mechanisms in
eukaryotes.
Contact: luis.sanchezpulido@dpag.ox.ac.uk
Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at
Bioinformatics online.
Received on March 29, 2011; revised on May 11, 2011; accepted on
May 27, 2011
1 INTRODUCTION
Archaea and eukarya possess DNA replication machineries that
are evolutionarily related, indicative of a common ancestry prior
to the divergence of these two ancient lineages (Leipe et al.,
1999). In particular, progression at eukaryotic replication forks
requires a large multimolecular complex (the ‘replisome progression
complex’) consisting of Cdc45, the GINS (go-ichi-ni-san) complex
(Sld5, Psf1-3) and MCM2-7 (Aparicio et al., 1997; Gambus et al.,
2006). Archaea possess homologs of only GINS subunits and
MCM2-7, the macromolecular machine presumed to unwind DNA
during replication (Marinsek et al., 2006). In eukaryotes, the third
component of this complex, Cdc45, is essential, ubiquitous and
critical for the initiation and elongation of DNAreplication (Aparicio
et al., 1997; Costa et al., 2011; Difﬂey et al., 1998; Mimura and
Takisawa, 1998; Takisawa et al., 2000; Tercero et al., 2000).
Despite this fundamental contribution to eukaryotic DNA
replication, orthologues of Cdc45 are not apparent among either
archaea or bacteria. Is Cdc45, therefore, an innovation of early
eukaryotic life, one that has since become essential in eukaryotic
species from across this diverse kingdom (Leipe et al., 1999)? Such
innovations are very common. There is, for example, no known
DNA repair protein possessing the same arrangement of protein
domains across bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes, and only one repair
protein, the 5 –3 exonuclease RecJ (Lovett and Kolodner, 1989),
∗To whom correspondence should be addressed.
which is conserved in most bacteria and archaea, but that is absent
from eukarya (Aravind et al., 1999; Rajman and Lovett, 2000).
For most prokaryotic species, RecJ is the only 5 –3 exonuclease
that is speciﬁc for single-stranded DNA (ssDNA). It is known to
be involved in homologous recombination, base excision repair,
mismatch repair and, of particular importance here, in the rescue
of stalled replication forks (Chow and Courcelle, 2007; Courcelle
and Hanawalt, 1999; Courcelle et al., 2003; Han et al., 2006; Lovett
and Kolodner, 1989; Sutera et al., 1999; Wakamatsu et al., 2010;
Yamagata et al., 2002).
In order to better understand the molecular function of Cdc45,
which remains far from clear, and to trace its evolutionary ancestry,
we embarked on an extensive analysis of Cdc45 sequences.
2 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
2.1 Computational protein sequence analysis
Our exhaustive database searches for Cdc45 homologs using
BLAST (Altschul et al., 1997) revealed, as expected, single copies
in all eukaryotes, from animals to land plants and fungi. We then
employed a protein domain hunting strategy based on proﬁle-tosequence
comparisons using HMMer2 (Eddy, 1996) against the
UniRef50 protein sequence database (Wu et al., 2006). As queries,
we used sequence regions conserved within the Cdc45 multiple
sequence alignment generated with T-Coffee (Notredame et al.,
2000).
Surprisingly, this approach yielded statistically signiﬁcant
sequence similarity of Cdc45 orthologues with the RecJ family of
DHH phosphoesterases (Aravind and Koonin, 1998). For example,
a global proﬁle sequence search with the N-terminal conserved
region of the Cdc45 family (corresponding to amino acids 16–104 of
UniProt: O75419_HUMAN) as query (represented by a green oval
in Fig. 1A), identiﬁed the ﬁrst RecJ family member in an archaeal
sequence (amino acids 23–107 of UniProt: B1L6T5_KORCO from
Korarchaeum cryptoﬁlum) with a signiﬁcant E-value of 0.002
(Fig. 1A–C). Reciprocally, the proﬁle of the DHH RecJ N-terminal
domain yielded a signiﬁcant sequence similarity with a green algal
Cdc45 protein (amino acids 24–115 of UniProt:A8HW43_CHLRE
from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii; E-value = 0.1; Fig. 1C).
Additionally, predicted secondary structures (Jones, 1999) of the
N-terminal region of the Cdc45 family are consistent with secondary
structures from the known crystal structure of RecJ (Yamagata et al.,
2002) (Fig. 1E). We were unable to identify statistically signiﬁcant
sequence similarity in the evolutionarily conserved C-termini of the
Cdc45 family to other protein sequences (represented by a red box
in Fig. 1A; see Supplementary Figure).
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L.Sanchez-Pulido and C.P.Ponting
A
E
B C D
Fig. 1. Sequence analysis of the Cdc45 and RecJ protein families. (A) Domain architecture of human Cdc45 and Escherichia coli RecJ proteins. For the
E.coli RecJ protein, domains were assigned according to the RecJ core structure (Yamagata et al., 2002) and the Pfam domain database (Finn et al., 2008).
Proteins are drawn approximately to scale. (B) Ribbon diagram of the Thermus thermophilus RecJ core structure (PDB-ID: 1IR6) (Yamagata et al., 2002)
colored by its domain architecture: DHH domain (in green), helical domain (in purple), long connecting alpha helix (in black) and DHHA1 domain (in violet).
The ribbon diagram was drawn using the Pymol protein structure visualization program (http://www.pymol.org/). (C) HMMer and HHpred comparison
E-values between Cdc45 and RecJ families. Numbers correspond to HMMer proﬁle versus sequence (gray boxes) and HHpred proﬁle versus proﬁle (blue
box) comparison E-values from global proﬁle search results (Eddy, 1996; Soding et al., 2005). Arrows indicate the proﬁle search direction. (D) Homology
model of the DHH domain of human Cdc45. The surface coloring scheme indicates average BLOSUM62 scores (which are correlated with amino acid
conservation) identical to those used for the alignment. Highly conserved residues that form part of its predicted active center are labeled and side chains
shown. A manganese ion (from PDB-ID: 1IR6) is represented by the green sphere. The human Cdc45 DHH domain structural model was created using
Modeler (Sali and Blundell, 1993) based on a RecJ structure (Yamagata et al., 2002) and presented using Pymol. (E) Representative multiple sequence
alignment of the DHH domain from Cdc45 and RecJ families. The alignment was produced using a combination of T-Coffee (Notredame et al., 2000) and
the proﬁle-to-proﬁle alignment program HHalign (Soding et al., 2005). The limits of the protein sequences included in the alignment are indicated by the
residue positions provided at each side. It was represented with the program Belvu (Sonnhammer and Hollich, 2005) using a coloring scheme indicating
the average BLOSUM62 scores (which are correlated with amino acid conservation) of each alignment column: red (>1.55), violet (between 1.55 and 0.8)
and light yellow (between 0.8 and 0.3). Residues predicted to form part of the active center of human Cdc45 DHH domain are indicated by red boxes
above the alignment. Phyletic ranges of Cdc45 and RecJ families are indicated by colored bars to the left of the alignment: red (eukarya), yellow (archaea)
and purple (bacteria). PsiPred secondary structure predictions (Jones, 1999) for the Cdc45 family are shown (in green) below the Cdc45 family alignment.
Secondary structures from T.thermophilus RecJ (PDB-ID: 1IR6) are shown (in red) below the alignment (Yamagata et al., 2002). Alpha helices and beta
strands are indicated by cylinders and arrows, respectively. Sequences are named with their Uniprot identiﬁcations (Wu et al., 2006). Species abbreviations:
HUMAN, Homo sapiens; DROME, Drosophila melanogaster; CAEEL, Caenorhabditis elegans; DICDI, Dictyostelium discoideum; NEUCR, Neurospora
crassa; YEAST, Saccharomyces cerevisiae; SCHPO, Schizosaccharomyces pombe; PARTE, Paramecium tetraurelia; ARATH, Arabidopsis thaliana; OSTLU,
Ostreococcus lucimarinus; CHLRE, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii; KORCO, Korarchaeum cryptoﬁlum; METJA, Methanocaldococcus jannaschii; ARCFU,
Archaeoglobus fulgidus; BACSU, Bacillus subtilis; LISMO, Listeria monocytogenes; DICT6, Dictyoglomus thermophilum; THET8, Thermus thermophilus;
and, ECOLI, Escherichia coli.
To determine whether fold recognition analysis would generate
supporting results, we submitted the Cdc45 N-terminal region as
query to HHpred, a tool based on proﬁle–proﬁle comparisons
(Soding et al., 2005). The proﬁle generated for the Cdc45
N-terminal region matched the N-terminal DHH domain of Thermus
thermophilus RecJ protein (PDB-IDs: 2ZXR & 1IR6) (Wakamatsu
et al., 2010; Yamagata et al., 2002) with a highly signiﬁcant E-value
of 6×10−5 (estimated error rate <3%) despite a low level of
sequence identity (<20%) to the human Cdc45 protein (Fig. 1C).
Moreover, in support of the ﬁrst match, the next most statistically
signiﬁcant (from an E-value = 4×10−4) matches are to seven more
distant members of the DHH superfamily of phosphoesterases
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Cdc45
(PDB-IDs: 3DEV, 3DMA, 1WPN, 1K20, 2HAW, 2QB7 and 2EB0)
(Aravind and Koonin, 1998; Fabrichniy et al., 2007; Merckel et al.,
2001; Ugochukwu et al., 2007).
The signiﬁcant E-values of HMMer searches, the consistency
of secondary structure predictions and corroboration by proﬁle-toproﬁle
comparison and fold assignment (HHpred) methods, taken
together provide strong evidence that Cdc45 and RecJ families share
a homologous DHH domain located at their N-termini. The inclusion
within the Cdc45 alignment of distantly related sequences from
recently sequenced unicellular eukaryotes, such as algae, and the
use of proﬁle-to-proﬁle comparison tools that allow more sensitive
sequence searches, likely explain why this remote homologous
relationship between Cdc45 and RecJ families had hitherto escaped
detection.
2.2 Consideration of whether Cdc45 originated from
an ancestral RecJ molecule
In HMMer and HHPred searches, Cdc45 sequences were found to
be most similar to RecJ sequences than to any other DHH family
protein. Closer similarity between Cdc45 and RecJ than to any
other DHH proteins implies that these proteins may be orthologous,
having been derived from a single homolog in the last common
ancestor of all cellular life. Evidence for or against this proposal was
not forthcoming from phylogenetic analysis of DHH sequences. This
was because accurate alignment is only possible for these sequences
over motifs I, II and III (Fig. 1E; Aravind and Koonin, 1998) and
this provides insufﬁcient information to generate either a stable
phylogeny or robust bootstrap values. Nevertheless, it is notable
that the phyletic distribution of RecJ among bacteria and archaea
(Aravind et al., 1999), to the exclusion of eukarya, is complementary
with the eukarya-speciﬁc phyletic distribution of what we now report
as its eukaryotic homolog, Cdc45 (see species distribution of Pfam
family CDC45 accession: PF02724) (Finn et al., 2008). We thus
suggest that Cdc45 and RecJ are orthologues, having been derived
from a single homolog in the last common ancestor of all cellular
life. Orthology is also consistent with the observation that to date,
other than Cdc45, no eukaryotic member of the DHH superfamily
has been implicated in DNA repair or replication.
2.3 Structure and function of RecJ and Cdc45
The RecJ core structure contains two globular regions connected
by a long alpha helix (Fig. 1B). Homology between Cdc45 and
RecJ that we describe above corresponds to the N-terminal DHH
domain which is named after three conserved residues (Asp, His,
His) that contribute to catalysis and/or to binding to bivalent cations,
such as manganese Mn2+ or Mg2+. The Cdc45 DHH domain
contains three (I to III) of the four conserved motifs that form part
of the divalent cation coordination sphere of their phosphoesterase
catalytic center (Aravind and Koonin, 1998; Fabrichniy et al., 2007;
Halonen et al., 2005; Merckel et al., 2001; Sutera et al., 1999;
Tammenkoski et al., 2007; Ugochukwu et al., 2007; Wakamatsu
et al., 2010; Yamagata et al., 2002). Aside from two aspartic acids
of motif I, broadly conserved within the Cdc45 family (D26 and
D28, see Fig. 1D and E), a common element to all these structures
is an aspartic acid–histidine pair (D99 and H101, Fig. 1D and E),
equivalent to ﬂanking residues of the DHH triplet motif which
lends the enzyme family its name (motif III). This triplet motif
is also present in Cdc45 from the green algae Chlamydomonas
reinhardtii (Fig. 1E) and Volvox carteri. The aspartic acid–histidine
pair is highly conserved in Cdc45, and in the DHH family has been
postulated to act as a general acid, to protonate the oxygen bridging
the phosphate groups thereby facilitating its hydrolysis (Ugochukwu
et al., 2007). However, the Cdc45 family exhibits a substitution of
an aspartic acid, which is otherwise well conserved in the DHH
family, with a non-conserved asparagine (N76). The aspartic acid,
together with the central histidine of the DHH motif (motif III), form
part of the conserved divalent cation coordination sphere identiﬁed
in the known structures of the DHH superfamily. On one hand,
the apparently incomplete phosphoesterase active center of Cdc45
might reﬂect substantial differences in the catalytic activities of RecJ
and Cdc45. On the other, the Cdc45 active center may have further
contributions from amino acids from within its apparently RecJdissimilar
yet conserved C-terminal region, or even contributions
from its interaction partners, in an analogous manner to arginine
residues of Ras GTPase activator proteins that stabilize the transition
state of the GTPase reaction (Ahmadian et al., 1997).
Homology between RecJ and Cdc45 suggests that these molecules
share molecular and/or cellular functions. Cdc45 is enriched at
stalled replication forks (Pacek et al., 2006) and has been described
as a checkpoint of the DNA damage-dependent response with
potential roles in genome stability (Broderick and Nasheuer,
2009; Liu et al., 2006). Due to Cdc45 being an indispensable
component of eukaryotic DNA replication forks and owing to its
closer evolutionary relationship to RecJ than to any other DHH
phosphoesterase, eukaryotic Cdc45 may, like prokaryotic RecJ, be
involved in the rescue of stalled replication fork structures (Chow
and Courcelle, 2007; Courcelle and Hanawalt, 1999; Courcelle et al.,
2003).
Others have proposed that the 5 –3 exonuclease EXO1-mediated
processing of stalled replication forks in eukaryotes (CottaRamusino
et al., 2005; Qiu et al., 1998) resembles the action of
bacterial RecJ (Courcelle et al., 2003; Han et al., 2006). However,
genetic evidence indicates that additional proteins possess an EXO1like
exonuclease activity involved in the rescue of stalled replication
forks (Alam et al., 2003).
Cdc45 may thus have retained only a subset of RecJ’s diverse
cellular roles. It may also be possible that the DHH domain of Cdc45
acquired a novel exonuclease activity that facilitates the initiation
and elongation of the eukaryotic DNAreplication fork. Nevertheless,
preliminary studies have not revealed it to possess such an activity
(data not shown).
Alternatively, another functional scenario for Cdc45 is suggested
by a recent experimental ﬁnding that bacterial RecJ-like proteins
are involved in the degradation of oligonucleotides, suggesting a
potential role for both RecJ and Cdc45 in preventing genomic
alterations during DNA replication (Bryan and Swanson, 2011;
Wakamatsu et al., 2011).
3 CONCLUSION
We have identiﬁed a statistically signiﬁcant sequence similarity
between the N-terminal conserved DHH domains of Cdc45 and
RecJ families. We postulate that Cdc45 possesses a divalent cation
(Mg2+ or Mn2+) dependent 5 –3 exonuclease activity important
for DNA replication. Experimental approaches are now required to
investigate these evolutionary, molecular and cellular hypotheses.
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L.Sanchez-Pulido and C.P.Ponting
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are grateful to John Rouse (University of Dundee) for his
insightful comments on Cdc45.
Funding: L.S.-P. and C.P.P. are supported by the Medical Research
Council UK.
Conﬂict of Interest: none declared.
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