If ERC accumulation is the aging process that leads to age-associated LOH, their influence on LOH must be Fob1-dependent. Indeed, it has previously been shown that plasmids containing the RFB sites from an rDNA repeat can integrate into the chromosomal rDNA array in a Fob1-dependent manner [55]. Thus, ERCs may be capable of initiating recombination events in a Fob1-dependent manner that somehow increases the frequency of homologous recombination in diploid cells. Alternatively, accumulating ERCs could simply titrate away factors that affect the frequency or stability of stalled DNA replication forks and thus increase their conversion to DSBs within the rDNA array [26].
