Role of Doa1 in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae DNA damage response

The cellular response to DNA damage requires not only direct repair of the damage but also changes in the DNA replication machinery, chromatin, and transcription that facilitate survival. Here, we describe Saccharomyces cerevisiae Doa1, which helps to control the damage response by channeling ubiquitin from the proteosomal degradation pathway into pathways that mediate altered DNA replication and chromatin modification. DOA1 interacts with genes involved in PCNA ubiquitination, including RAD6, RAD18, RAD5, UBC13, and MMS2, as well as genes involved in histone H2B ubiquitination or deubiquitination, including RAD6, BREI, LGE1, CDC73, UBP8, UBP10, and HTB2. In the absence of DOA1, damage-induced ubiquitination of PCNA does not occur. In addition, the level of ubiquitinated H2B is decreased under normal conditions and completely absent in the presence of DNA damage. In the case of PCNA, the defect associated with the doa1 Delta mutant is alleviated by overexpression of ubiquitin, but in the case of H2B, it is not. The data suggest that Doal is the major source of ubiquitin for the DNA damage response and that Doal also plays an additional essential and more specific role in the monoubiquitination of histone H2B.