DNA2 and FANCM function in two distinctive pathways in disrupting TERRA R-loops and suppressing replication stress at ALT telomeres

Abstract Cancers maintain their telomeres through two main telomere maintenance mechanisms (TMMs): 85-90% of cancers rely on telomerase, while 10-15% of cancers adopt the Alternative Lengthening of Telomere (ALT) pathway. Previously, we and others reported that FANCM, one of the Fanconi Anemia proteins, plays a critical role in suppressing replication stress and DNA damage at ALT telomeres by actively disrupting TERRA R-loops [1–4]. Here, we showed that inactivation of DNA2 in ALT-positive (ALT+) cells, but not in telomerase-positive (TEL+) cells, induces a robust increase of replication stress and DNA damage at telomeres, which leads to a pronounced increase of many ALT properties, including telomere dysfunction-induced foci (TIFs), ALT-associated PML bodies (APBs), and C-circles. We further demonstrated that depletion of DNA2 induces a pronounced increase of TERRA R-loops and a decrease in replication efficiency at ALT telomeres. Most importantly, we uncovered a strong additive genetic interaction between DNA2 and FANCM in the ALT pathway. Furthermore, co-depletion of DNA2 and FANCM causes synthetic lethality in ALT+ cells, but not in TEL+ cells, suggesting that targeting DNA2 and FANCM could be a viable strategy to treat ALT+ cancers. Finally, utilizing the single-molecule telomere assay via optical mapping (SMTA-OM) technology, we thoroughly characterized genome-wide changes in DNA2 deficient cells and FANCM deficient cells and found that most chromosome arms manifested increased telomere length. Unexpectedly, we uncovered many chromosome arm-specific telomere changes in those cells, suggesting that telomeres at different chromosome arms may regulate and respond to replication stress differently. Collectively, our study not only shed new light on the molecular mechanisms of the ALT pathway, but also discovered a new strategy for targeting ALT+ cancer.