Error‐free DNA damage tolerance pathway is facilitated by the Irc5 translocase through cohesin

Abstract DNA damage tolerance (DDT) mechanisms facilitate replication resumption and completion when DNA replication is blocked by bulky DNA lesions. In budding yeast, template switching (TS) via the Rad18/Rad5 pathway is a favored DDT pathway that involves usage of the sister chromatid as a template to bypass DNA lesions in an error‐free recombination‐like process. Here, we establish that the Snf2 family translocase Irc5 is a novel factor that promotes TS and averts single‐stranded DNA persistence during replication. We demonstrate that, during replication stress, Irc5 enables replication progression by assisting enrichment of cohesin complexes, recruited in an Scc2/Scc4‐dependent fashion, near blocked replication forks. This allows efficient formation of sister chromatid junctions that are crucial for error‐free DNA lesion bypass. Our results support the notion of a key role of cohesin in the completion of DNA synthesis under replication stress and reveal that the Rad18/Rad5‐mediated DDT pathway is linked to cohesin enrichment at sites of perturbed replication via the Snf2 family translocase Irc5.