Schizosaccharomyces pombe Apn1 encodes a homologue of the Escherichia coli endonuclease IV family of DNA repair proteins

The Apn1 protein of the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a DNA repair enzyme that hydrolyzes apurinic/apyrimidinic (AP) sites and removes 3'-blocking groups present at single strand breaks of damaged DNA. Yeast cells lacking Apn1 are hypersensitive to DNA damaging agents that produce AP sites and DNA strand breaks with blocked 3'-termini. In this study, we showed that the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe bears a homologue, Spapn1, that is 45% identical to S. cerevisiae Apn1. However, the Spapn1 gene is apparently not expressed. Active expression of S. cerevisiae Apn1 in S. pombe conferred no additional resistance to DNA damaging agents. These data suggest that the pathway by which S. pombe repairs AP sites is independent of a functional Apn1-like AP endonuclease.