Topological stress is responsible for the detrimental outcomes of head-on replication-transcription conflicts

Abstract

Conflicts between the replication and transcription machineries have profound effects on chromosome duplication, genome organization, as well as evolution across species. Head-on conflicts (lagging strand genes) are significantly more detrimental than co-directional conflicts (leading strand genes). The source of this fundamental difference is unknown. Here, we report that topological stress underlies this difference. We find that head-on conflict resolution requires the relaxation of positive supercoils DNA gyrase and Topo IV. Interestingly, we find that after positive supercoil resolution, gyrase introduces excessive negative supercoils at head-on conflict regions, driving pervasive R-loop formation. The formation of these R-Loops through gyrase activity is most likely caused by the diffusion of negative supercoils through RNA polymerase spinning. Altogether, our results address a longstanding question regarding replication-transcription conflicts by revealing the fundamental mechanistic difference between the two types of encounters.