Er. Nimmo et al., TELOMERE-ASSOCIATED CHROMOSOME BREAKAGE IN FISSION YEAST RESULTS IN VARIEGATED EXPRESSION OF ADJACENT GENES, EMBO journal, 13(16), 1994, pp. 3801-3811
The sequence requirements for in vivo telomere function in the fission
yeast, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, have been investigated. A 258 bp tr
act of previously characterized cloned fission yeast terminal repeats
adjacent to 800 bp of telomere-associated sequences is sufficient to s
eed new telomeres onto linearized ars-containing plasmids when introdu
ced into cells. The resulting transformants contain unrearranged, acen
tric, linear episomes. Cloned telomeres, with and without telomere-ass
ociated sequences adjacent to the 258 bp terminal repeats, were utiliz
ed to introduce chromosome breaks at specific sites in a non-essential
minichromosome. Truncated minichromosome derivatives were recovered c
ontaining the ura4 or ade6 gene adjacent to a newly formed telomere. T
hese telomeres exert reversible position effects on the expression of
the adjacent ural or ade6 genes.