 Schizosaccharomyces pombe  Rtf2 is important for replication fork barrier activity of  RTS1  via splicing of  Rtf1 .
Arrested replication forks, when restarted by homologous recombination, result in error-prone DNA syntheses and non-allelic homologous recombination. Fission yeast  RTS1  is a model fork barrier used to probe mechanisms of recombination-dependent restart.  RTS1  barrier activity is entirely dependent on the DNA binding protein Rtf1 and partially dependent on a second protein, Rtf2. Human RTF2 was recently implicated in fork restart, leading us to examine fission yeast Rtf2's role in more detail. In agreement with previous studies, we observe reduced barrier activity upon  rtf2  deletion. However, we identified Rtf2 to be physically associated with mRNA processing and splicing factors and  rtf2  deletion to cause increased intron retention. One of the most affected introns resided in the  rtf1  transcript. Using an intronless  rtf1,  we observed no reduction in RFB activity in the absence of Rtf2. Thus, Rtf2 is essential for correct  rtf1  splicing to allow optimal  RTS1  barrier activity.
Budden AM, Eravci M, Watson AT, Campillo-Funollet E, Oliver AW, Naiman K, Carr AM