Different DNA repair pathways are involved in single-strand break-induced genomic changes in plants

In nature, single-strand breaks (SSBs) in DNA occur more frequently (by orders of magnitude) than double-strand breaks (DSBs). SSBs induced by the CRISPR/Cas9 nickase at a distance of 50-100 bp on opposite strands are highly mutagenic, leading to insertions/deletions (InDels), with insertions mainly occurring as direct tandem duplications. As short tandem repeats are overrepresented in plant genomes, this mechanism seems to be important for genome evolution. We investigated the distance at which paired 5'-overhanging SSBs are mutagenic and which DNA repair pathways are essential for insertion formation in Arabidopsis thaliana. We were able to detect InDel formation up to a distance of 250 bp, although with much reduced efficiency. Surprisingly, the loss of the classical nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ) pathway factors KU70 or DNA ligase 4 completely abolished tandem repeat formation. The microhomology-mediated NHEJ factor POLQ was required only for patch-like insertions, which are well-known from DSB repair as templated insertions from ectopic sites. As SSBs can also be repaired using homology, we furthermore asked whether the classical homologous recombination (HR) pathway is involved in this process in plants. The fact that RAD54 is not required for homology-mediated SSB repair demonstrates that the mechanisms for DSB- and SSB-induced HR differ in plants.