John L. Nitiss

A multi-species toolkit of TOP2 hypercleavage mutants for studying topoisomerase II-mediated DNA damage

The paper develops hypercleavage TOP2 mutants in yeast, human, and mouse to study TOP2-mediated DNA damage and toxicity, showing their utility in genetic screens and in vivo models.

A conserved SUMO-Ubiquitin pathway directed by RNF4/SLX5-SLX8 and PIAS4/SIZ1 drives proteasomal degradation of topoisomerase DNA-protein crosslinks

The paper identifies a conserved SUMO-Ubiquitin pathway involving PIAS4 and RNF4 that mediates proteasomal degradation of topoisomerase DNA-protein crosslinks in human and yeast cells.

Trapped Topoisomerase II initiates formation of de novo duplications via the nonhomologous end-joining pathway in yeast

This study identifies a yeast Top2 mutant that generates stabilized cleavage intermediates, leading to de novo duplications via nonhomologous end-joining.