DciA secures bidirectional replication initiation in Vibrio cholerae

Replication is initiated bidirectionally in the three domains of life by the assembly of two replication forks at an origin of replication. This is made possible by the recruitment of two replicative helicases to a nucleoprotein platform built at the origin of replication with the initiator protein. The reason why replication is initiated bidirectionally has never been experimentally addressed due to the lack of a suitable biological system. Using genetic and genomic approaches, we show that upon depletion of DciA, replication is no longer initiated bidirectionally at the origin of replication of Vibrio cholerae chromosome 1. We show that following unidirectional replication on the left replichore, nascent DNA strands at ori1 anneal to each other to form a double-stranded DNA end. While this DNA end can be efficiently resected in recB+ cells, only a few cells use it to trigger replication on the right replichore. In most DciA-depleted cells, chromosome 1 is degraded leading to cell death. Our results suggest that DciA is essential to ensuring bidirectional initiation of replication in bacteria, preventing a cascade of deleterious events following unidirectional replication initiation.