Depletion of Endonuclease G Selectively Kills Polyploid Cells

Sabrina Büttner, Didac Carmona-Gutierrez, Ilio Vitale, Maria Castedo, Doris Ruli, Tobias Eisenberg, Guido Kroemer and Frank Madeo

volume 6 | issue 9

2 May 2007
Pages: 1072 - 1076

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Endonuclease G is a mitochondrio-nuclear located nuclease with dual- vital and lethal- functions. Besides its role in apoptosis execution, we have recently shown that depletion of endonuclease G leads to necrotic cell death in yeast. Here, we present further mechanistic elucidation of endonuclease G's vital functions. The deletion of the yeast Endonuclease G gene causes the complete elimination of tetraploid cells during exponential growth. Consistently, conditional knockdown of mammalian endonuclease G selectively kills tetraploid but not diploid clones of the human HCT116 colon carcinoma cell line. We conclude that endonuclease G is important for the viability of polyploid mammalian and yeast cells.