The Caenorhabditis elegans THO Complex Is Required for the Mitotic Cell Cycle and Development

Abstract

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. ; THO is a conserved eukaryotic complex involved in mRNP biogenesis and RNA export that plays an important role in preventing transcription- and RNA-mediated genome instability in mitosis and meiosis. In mammals THO is essential for embryogenesis, which limits our capacity to analyze the physiological relevance of THO during development and in adult organisms. Using Caenorhabditis elegans as a model system we show that the THO complex is essential for mitotic genome integrity and the developmentally regulated mitotic cell cycles occurring during late postembryonic stages. ; This work was supported by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (BFU2010-16372 and Consolider Ingenio 2010 CSD2007-0015), the European Union (FEDER) and the Junta de Andalucía (CVI4567). MCP was the recipient of a predoctoral training fellowship from the Spanish National Institute of Health Carlos III. ; Peer reviewed