Cytosine deamination and base excision repair cause R-loop–induced CAG repeat fragility and instability in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

CAG/CTG repeats are structure-forming repetitive DNA sequences, and expansion beyond a threshold of ∼35 CAG repeats is the cause of several human diseases. Expanded CAG repeats are prone to breakage, and repair of the breaks can cause repeat contractions and expansions. In this study, we found that cotranscriptional R-loops formed at a CAG-70 repeat inserted into a yeast chromosome. R-loops were further elevated upon deletion of yeast RNaseH...