Suppression of non-homologous end joining does not rescue DNA repair defects in Fanconi anemia patient cells

Severe cellular sensitivity and aberrant chromosomal rearrangements in response to DNA interstrand crosslink (ICL) inducing agents are hallmarks of Fanconi anemia (FA) deficient cells. These phenotypes have previously been ascribed to inappropriate activity of non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) rather than a direct consequence of DNA ICL repair defects. Here we used chemical inhibitors, RNAi, and Clusterd Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat (CRISPR)-Cas9 to inactivate various components of NHEJ in cells from FA patients. We show that suppression of DNA-PKcs, DNA Ligase IV and 53BP1 is not capable of rescuing ICL-induced proliferation defects and only 53BP1 knockout partially suppresses the chromosomal abnormalities of FA patient cells. 2 . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/151472 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Jun. 17, 2017;