Telomere length homeostasis is essential for maintaining genomic stability and cancer proliferation. Telomerase-negative cancer cells undergo recombination-mediated alternative lengthening of telomeres. Telomeres associate with the nuclear envelope through the shelterin RAP1 and nuclear envelope SUN1 proteins. However, how the associations between telomeres and the nuclear envelope affect the progression of telomere recombination is not understood. Here, we show that telomere anchorage might inhibit telomere-telomere recombination. SUN1 depletion stimulates the formation of alternative lengthening of telomeres-associated promyelocytic leukemia bodies in ALT cells. In contrast, overexpression of a telomere-nuclear envelope-tethering chimera protein, RAP1-SUN1, suppresses APB formation. Moreover, inhibition of this nuclear envelope attachment alleviates the requirement of TOP3α for resolving the supercoiling pressure during telomere recombination. A coimmunoprecipitation assay revealed that the SUN1 N-terminal nucleoplasmic domain interacts with the RAP1 middle coil domain, and phosphorylation-mimetic mutations in RAP1 inhibit this interaction. However, abolishing the RAP1-SUN1 interaction does not hinder APB formation, which hints at the existence of another SUN1-dependent telomere anchorage pathway. In summary, our results reveal an inhibitory role of telomere-nuclear envelope association in telomere-telomere recombination and imply the presence of redundant pathways for the telomere-nuclear envelope association in ALT cells.
Keywords: RAP1; SUN1; alternative lengthening of telomeres; nuclear envelope tethering; telomere-telomere recombination.