Summary: Replication stress, a major hallmark of cancers, and ensuing genome instability source from impaired progression of replication forks. The first line of defense against fork slowing is compensation, a long-described process that elicits firing of otherwise dormant origins. It remains unclear whether compensation requires activation of the DNA replication checkpoint or passively results from lengthening of the window of time during which dormant origins can fire when fork progression slows, or both. Using molecular DNA combing we show here that a linear relationship ties inter-origin distances to fork speeds, independently of the checkpoint status. We called this line “stressline” and further show that its slope enables precise quantification of the compensation efficiency. Comparison of the slopes in different genetic backgrounds reveals that compensation requires ATR, not CHK1, while TopBP1 and CDC7/DBF4 repress dormant origin activation. These results strongly suggest that TopBP1 locks dormant origins at the pre-IC stage and that ATR and DDK oppose to control the conversion of dormant pre-ICs into functional salvage origins. Both passive and active processes thus contribute to compensation. Moreover, Repli-seq and OK-seq analyses confirm the activating role of ATR and permit development of ATRAP-seq, a new procedure allowing mapping of early constitutive origins.

Over the last decade, CDK4/6 inhibitors (palbociclib, ribociclib and abemaciclib) have emerged as promising anticancer drugs. Numerous studies have demonstrated that CDK4/6 inhibitors efficiently block the pRb-E2F pathway and induce cell cycle arrest in pRb-proficient cells. Based on these studies, the inhibitors have been approved by the FDA for treatment of advanced hormonal receptor (HR) positive breast cancers in combination with hormonal therapy. However, some evidence has recently shown unexpected effects of the inhibitors, underlining a need to characterize the effects of CDK4/6 inhibitors beyond pRb. Our study demonstrates how palbociclib impairs origin firing in the DNA replication process in pRb-deficient cell lines. Strikingly, despite the absence of pRb, cells treated with palbociclib synthesize less DNA while showing no cell cycle arrest. Furthermore, this CDK4/6 inhibitor treatment disturbs the temporal program of DNA replication and reduces the density of replication forks. Cells treated with palbociclib show a defect in the loading of the Pre-initiation complex (Pre-IC) proteins on chromatin, indicating a reduced initiation of DNA replication. Our findings highlight hidden effects of palbociclib on the dynamics of DNA replication and of its cytotoxic consequences on cell viability in the absence of pRb. This study provides a potential therapeutic application of palbociclib in combination with other drugs to target genomic instability in pRB-deficient cancers.