In the unicellular eukaryote model, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, aging is determined by the number of replicative cycles a mother cell undergo before dying (1) . The asymmetric division of yeast causes an accumulation of factors in the mother cell such as protein aggregates (2, 3) and circular DNA from the rDNA locus, also known as ERCs or [rDNA circle ] (4). Accumulation of circular rDNA is associated to a massive increase in ribosomal rRNA levels (5) and the accumulation can reduce the number of divisions a cell can undergo by 40% (4) . Replicative aging is not specifically associated with circular DNA from the rDNA locus but rather it appears to be the accumulation of circular DNA in general that causes a shorter lifespan of the mother cell (4) .
The segregation and accumulation of circular rDNA has been extensively studied (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) . However, our knowledge about segregation of other circular DNA species of chromosomal origin is based on a few model circles with a small range of genetic markers (4, 6, 7, 11) . Therefore, it is not clear whether segregation kinetics, inferred from a small number of model circles, can be generalized to circular DNA formed from other parts of the genome. This is important to establish since circular DNA, derived from other parts of the genome, might naturally contribute to aging and because amplifications of genes on circular DNA can provide strong phenotypic effects to the cell carrying them (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) .
Circular rDNA from the rDNA array on chromosome XII carries a consensus sequence for replication (ARS) for each rDNA-repeat unit (17) . This can likely ensure replication of a formed [rDNA circle ] in mitosis but not faithful segregation between mother and daughter cells (6, 7, 11) . The asymmetric segregation of replicated rDNA is suggested to be the cause of accumulation of [rDNA circles ] in mother cells (4) . It was shown that circular rDNA mis-segregate with an estimated retention frequency above 0.99 per circle towards the mother cell (10) . The segregation bias can explain accumulation of replicating circular rDNA though the amount of circular rDNA might also be affected by increased formation rates in aging cells (18) , available nutrients and polymerase I (POLI) activity (9) , as well as the length of the rDNA array (9) .
The fate of circular DNA from other parts of the genome has primarily been studied through plasmids with the marker genes LYS1 and URA3 (4, (6) (7) (8) 11) . Circular DNA without centromeres have segregation biases that are similar to those for rDNA (6, 11) and two models have been suggested to explain their tendency to segregate towards the mother cell. In the active retention model, rDNA and non-rDNA circles are actively retained in the mother cells by the nuclear pore complexes via the TREX-2 and SAGA complex, which are suggested to tether the circular DNA to nuclear periphery of the mother cell (8) . The alternative model, known as the diffusion model, suggests that segregation of non-rDNA circles is determined by passive diffusion from the mother nucleus to the daughter nucleus (6) . The nuclear geometry restricts diffusion of circular DNA from mother to daughter under mitosis and thereby lead to a segregation bias (6) . The passive model is based on LYS2 circles with and without replication origin that distribute randomly across the nucleus rather than being associated to the nuclear envelope (6) . The different observations of circle distributions in the nucleus during mitosis, suggest that more than one mechanism for missegregation might exist.
Other genetic elements on circular DNA can ensure more equal segregation between mother and daughter cells. Circles with replication origins and centromeres are mitotically stable through their anchoring to the mitotic spindle and deviation from a 1:1 s egregation is only expected when centromeric circles fail to replicate (11) . Anchoring of circular DNA to telomeres through telomere binding proteins also ensures near equal segregation between mother and daughter cells (6, 19) .
For biotin labelling, 1x10 7 cells were harvested by centrifugation (15 s at 13,000 g), washed twice with 500 µL PBS and re-suspended in 500 µL of PBS containing ~3 mg/mL Biotin-NHS (Sigma B1022). Cells were incubated for 30 min on a rotating wheel at room temperature, washed once with 125 µL PBS and re-suspended in YPD. One sample of 0.25x10 7 cells was frozen on liquid nitrogen (N 2 ) at this point (B0). For datasets 2-5, 0.25x10 7 cells were inoculated in 12 mL YPD in a 25 mL flask and grown for 8 hours at 30˚C with shaking before harvest after 5 doublings by centrifugation and freezing on N 2 (progeny population). 0.5x10 7 cells were inoculated in 500 mL YPD in a 1 L flask containing 1 mM β-estradiol in a 500 mL flask and grown for 48 hours as above before harvest (BA).
For datasets 6-10, 0.5x10 7 cells were inoculated in 50 mL YPD in a 100 mL flask and grown for 8 hours at 30˚C with shaking, followed by harvesting by centrifugation and freezing on N 2 (progeny population). 0.25x10 7 cells were inoculated in 150 mL YPD containing 1 mM β-estradiol in a 500 mL flask and grown for 24 hours as above before harvest (aged population).
For cell purification, gradients (1 for progeny population or 2 for aged population) were formed by vortexing 1. 16 mL cold PBSE and eluted with 1 mL PBSE using a plunger. Cells were re-loaded on the same columns after re-equilibration with ~500 µL PBSE, washed and re-eluted, and this process repeated for a total of three successive purifications. 50 µL cells were set aside for quality control, while the remainder were pelleted by centrifugation and frozen on N 2 (progeny+ and aged population fractions).
For the progeny fraction, the initial flow-through of unbound cells from the first column was also collected and passed through a second column to deplete any remaining biotin-labelled cells to form the progeny-fraction. 
We demultiplexed the reads allowing zero mismatches in the barcodes and we checked the quality with FastQC (30) . We used the S. cerevisiae reference genome (S288C-R64-2-1) and the plasmids included in the Circle-Seq procedure as the alignment reference. Reads were aligned using BWA-MEM (v0.7.17-r1188) (31) with the -q option, leaving the rest of the parameters on their default settings. Samples with a mapping percentage lower than 80% were realigned reducing the seed (-k: 13). We used SAMtools (v1.9) (32) in all our downstream BAM processing steps (Supplementary Figure S1 ).
We used Circle-Map (v.0.9) package (29) to identify circular DNA. To detect circular DNA from the alignable regions, we first extracted all the reads with variation using the sub-package Circle-Map
ReadExtractor. Then, we executed the Realignment submodule with all the parameters set to default.
We obtained a robust circular DNA identifications by iteratively merging the circles that reciprocally overlapped by 50%. Then, we removed the circular DNA that did not contained >4 supporting reads and a sequencing coverage of 90%. We evaluated the effect of the sequencing depth on number of circular DNA by subsampling (setting SAMtools seed to 2) reads on the BAM files at intervals of 5% of reads, and executing the Circle-Map Realign pipeline as described above.
To detect Circular DNA from repetitive regions of the genome we identified reads whose 2sd highest alignment score was >= 80% of the 2st highest alignment score, with edits < 3. For every highest score -2sd highest score pair, Circle-Map reported the circular DNA using the leftmost and rightmost alignment position of the pair. Then, circular DNA with a read support lower than 20 were removed. To avoid redundant circular DNA, circular DNA reciprocally overlapping by 80% were merged. Then, we removed intervals with a coverage less than 80%.
We evaluated the effect of the sequencing depth on number of circular DNA by subsampling (setting the SAMtools random seed to 2) reads on the raw BAM files at intervals of 5% of reads, and executing the Circle-Map Realign pipeline as described above.
We annotated genomic features on circular DNA using bedtools (v2.27.1). We downloaded the features from the Saccharomyces Genome Database (Genome Version R64-2-1). Altogether, the following features were annotated: replication origin, gene names (symbols) and ORFs (location holders), centromeres, introns, solo LTR elements, LTR transposons (Ty), telomeric elements, rRNA genes and tRNA genes. We annotated experimentally validated origins of replication from OriDB database (33) transforming the coordinates to the SacCer3 version using the UCSC liftover tool (34) .
Circular DNA found in both young, progeny and aged population were determined by intersecting the chromosomal coordinates. We allowed a maximum distance of + 300bp in the coordinates of circular DNA from alignable regions and 400bp for those from repetitive regions. We classified the circular DNA to class I if we found it all the subpopulations a sample; class II (in young and aged), class III (in young and progeny) and class VI (in aged and progeny); class IV (only in the young), class VII (only in the progeny) and class V (only in the aged). We applied two post -processing steps.
If a circular DNA was classified to different, we assigned the circular DNA to the highest order of representation (I > II, III & IV > V, VI & VII) . Then, circular DNA found in two classes of the same order of representation were considered ambiguous and we removed them from the further analysis. To discard whether the low number of intersections between the young and aged samples was produced by our filters to the data, we intersected all the circular DNA classified as lost with all the detected circles in the aged samples using the same distance criteria as mentioned above but without applying any read or coverage filters to the data.
We calculated the de novo mutation rates by dividing the number of circular DNA detected in the 2-5 aged yeast population by the cells recovered in the 4 aged populations multiplied by the number of divisions the aged cells went (20 divisions).
We counted the unambiguously aligned reads (quality >= 20) to every circular DNA across samples. We used R (v3. Alternatively, we used the spike in plasmids in samples 6 to 10 to quantify the circular DNA levels.
We first counted the number of reads aligned to the plasmids and the detected circular DNA (quality >= 20) and to the telomeric Y' and rDNA region (no mapping quality filters due to its tandem duplication structure). Then, we divided the number of reads aligned to the rDNA region by the sum over all reads aligned to plasmid (pUC19_yEGFP, pSH63, p4339 and pRS316).
We tested the overrepresentation of the annotated genomic features (OriDB, centromere, long_terminal_repeat, telomere, LTR_retrotransposon and intron) and 80 cis acting elements binding sites (37) between the class I & II and class III & IV circles. To define if a circular DNA carried a cis acting element, we scanned the sequence of the circular DNA for an exact match of the motif, with the exception of the origins of replication were we allowed for non-exact overlaps due to the lack of resolution. Then, for every feature, we used a two tailed Fisher test (38) . We independently corrected the p-values for the cis acting elements and the genomic features using the Benjamini-Hochberg method.
Cells were isolated from a CEN.PK glucose limited chemostat (CEN.PK wt MATα G6, as in (39) When outgrown, cells were washed with 0.9 M sorbitol and 0.1 M EDTA and exposed to Zymolyase (Zymo Research) at 37 C° until a majority of cells burst when exposed to hypo-osmotic stress in water.
Cells were then pelleted and suspended in 125 µl P1 buffer (Qiagen), that was then mixed with 125 µl Genotyping was repeated on the independent glucose limited chemostat culture (CEN.PK wt MATα G7 described in (39)).
We used the Wilcoxon test (R v3.5.1) to test if the medians were different between groups.
To determine the fate of circular DNA as S. cerevisiae age, we compared circular DNA across the genome of yeast populations when young and aged. This was done in 4 replicate populations, each of which was sampled when "young" and also used to produce two separate subpopulations: 1) an "aged" subpopulation of purified mothers that had aged for 48 hours (~15-25 cell divisions) through the MEP (27) that allows only mother cells to divide ( Figure 1A ) and 2) a "progeny" subpopulation that was allowed to produce progeny for 5 cell divisions and harvested without further purification (Supplementary Table S1 ).
We next purified and sequenced circular DNA from each subpopulation by removal of linear DNA ( Figure 1B and Supplementary Figure S2 ), rolling circle amplification and short-read paired end sequencing as previously described (20) . We developed two algorithms to map the origin of circular DNA in the S. cerevisiae genome, Circle-Map Realign and Circle-Map Repeats ( Figure 1C -D). The first detects circles from the unique regions of the genome by probabilistic alignment of reads that span the junctions of circles (soft-clipped and discordant reads) (29) . Using more than four of such junction reads and a read coverage > 90% as cut-off for confident circle detections, we detected 404 unique circular DNA over the 4 populations (subpopulation median: 26.5, range: 9-105) (Supplementary Table S2 ). The cut-off was found to be the optimal number of breakpoint reads and coverage for a robust recording of circular DNA (Supplementary Figure S3) . The second algorithm, Circle-Map Repeats, detects circular DNA from repetitive regions of the genome ( Figure 1D ) such as those from the rDNA array, LTR retrotransposons and the HXT6 HXT7 locus (4, 13, 20) . We detected 51 repetitive circular DNA (Supplementary Table S2 ) of which many came from loci known to undergo circularization such as rDNA, CUP1 CUP2 and ENA1 ENA2 ENA5 (4, 20) . All in all we found 51 + 404 Table S2 ).
We next classified the circles found in the young cells into five classes ( Figure 2C ). We found that all circular DNA species were captured at 20-30% of the total reads present in our sequencing datasets ( Figure 2C and Supplementary Figure S5 ).
Furthermore, to exclude that circles in the aged populations were filtered out due to our cut -off thresholds, we reanalysed the overlap between the young and the aged populations without applying split-read and read coverage filters ( Figure 1C -D) to the aged samples. This analysis gave no read evidence for circular DNA in aged cells for 96.5% of the class IV circular DNAs found in the young cells (e.g. Figure 2D ). Hence, our data shows that we detected the majority of circular DNA present in the yeast populations, and that a greater sequencing depth would most likely not have led to detection of more circles in any of the young, progeny or aged subpopulations. Besides class IV circ les that were only found in young cells ( Figure 2D ), we also found circular DNA that was only in the progeny and/or in the aged cells. These circles are likely to be products of de novo circularization events ( Figure 2A, ). Taken together, these results suggest that the majority of DNA circles present in young cell populations were lost as cells underwent replicative aging.
To find traits that could explain why some circular DNA persist in a population and others not, we screened for genetic features on circles maintained in the yeast populations as cells underwent replicative aging. We found that the recurring class I and II circles originated from repeat rich regions of the genome such as the HXT6 HXT7, rDNA, and CUP1-2 loci ( Figure 2E , Supplementary Table   S2 ). Still, six out of eleven circles found on this class were from non-repetitive genomic regions ( Figure 2F , Supplementary Table S2) , and our data indicates that there is no significant enrichment for circles from repetitive regions in the group formed by class I and class II circles (Two sided Table S4 ). Taken together, these results suggest that replication origins are an important feature for maintenance of circular DNA as mother cells divide, as recently shown using CUP1 as a model (40).
Among the circular DNA identified, we found circular DNAs that did not follow the inherence patterns expected from their genetic features. These were circles from direct repeats, telomeric Y' -circles and centromeric circles (Figure 3 ). An example of a circular DNA from a direct repeat locus was the [ENA circle ], which did not carry a replication origin but still occurred recurrently in different subpopulations ( Figure 3A, Figure   3C ). Hence, this circular DNA carried all the necessary elements for an equal replication and
segregation. Yet, we only found the CEN circle in one young subpopulation and not in the corresponding aged or progeny populations ( Figure 3C ). This indicates that the [CEN circle ] was lost from the aged yeast populations despite having a centromere. Taken together, thes e results suggested that the homologous direct repeat loci TEL12R and ENA1 ENA2 ENA5 formed circular DNA at high rates.
One of the hallmarks of aged yeast cells is the massive accumulation of [rDNA circles ] when compared to their young counterparts (4, 18, 42) . To investigate if recurrent non-rDNA circles also accumulated in aging cells, we quantified circular DNA by counting the number of reads aligned to the different circular DNA coordinates and normalizing the read counts, using the median of ratios method (43), as it compensates for the fact that [rDNA circles ] will have a strong influence on the circle specific read counts between the young and aged populations. We then removed circles that only appeared in one yeast sub-population, leading to a set of 13 recurrent circular DNA (Supplementary Table S5 ).
Principal Components Analysis (PCA) revealed that the aged yeast populations clustered tightly together ( Figure 4A ). Young and progeny sub-populations did not form any apparent clusters in the PCA, supporting that aging sub-populations were less heterogeneous than young. To obtain a better understanding of why old yeast cells became more similar as they aged, we complemented our PCA analysis with a hierarchical clustering of the recurrent circular DNA ( Figure 4B ). As in the PCA, the sample dendrogram of the hierarchical clustering ( Figure 4B Figure S7C) . We next addressed how rDNA levels influenced the circular DNA read distribution in the yeast populations ( Figure 4F ). Circles found in both young and aged cells are characterized by replication origins sugges ting that replication is essential for maintenance of circular DNA. This finding supports previous studies which have used acentric plasmids containing replication origins as a model to study the behaviour of circular DNA during cell division (8, 11) . When cells containing these plasmids were growth on nonselective medium, there was a segregation bias towards the mother cell, leaving the daughter cell with no copies of the plasmid (8, 11 and other circular DNA with replication origins and can therefore not explain their discrepancy. Circular rDNA formation has been shown to increase as cells age (5, 18) and could thus contribute to their accumulation. The rDNA locus is sequestered in the nucleolus in another enzymatic environment than other parts of the nucleus, with other DNA polymerases that can also influence formation rate (9) . It seems feasible that the physical separation of nucleus and nucleolus will also allow for a separate segregation mechanisms as recently suggested (5) ] over other maintained circles ( Figure 4F) is caused by different segregation mechanisms (passive or active retention) or because they have different formation rates but the same segregation mechanism.
An important exception to the inherence patterns found for most non-rDNA circles, are circles from genes in direct repeats (ENA1 ENA2 ENA5, Y' telomeric and HXT6 HXT7). Neither ENA1 ENA2
ENA5 or Y' telomeric circles carry replication origins and the fact that these circles are found recurrently in independent populations ( Figure 3) ; suggest that they are formed de novo with high rates. CUP1 CUP2 and HXT6 HXT7 carry replication origins, and are also found recurrently, suggesting that circles from direct repeats in general have a high formation rate. Hence, our data supports the notion (4, 40) that three factors determine how a circular DNA is maintained in a cell lineage: the rate by which it is formed from its chromosomal locus, its ability to replicate and its mode of segregation, as recently.
Interestingly, we find that aged cells have a lower number of different circular DNA than young cells. This suggests that yeast cells lose circular DNA genetic heterogeneity through aging and that the genetic variation upon which selection can act becomes lower with age. Young cells have a larger pool of genetic variation than old do, thereby theoretically allowing young cells to adapt and respond a wider set of condition than old cells. Furthermore, genes linked to replication origins and direct repeats are more likely to reside on circular DNA, evade the 1:1 segregation pattern, and thereby contribute to genetic variation in the form of circular DNA. This implies that replication origin linked genes might evolve faster, as they exist longer in a given populations when not under selective pressure. Several of the genes in direct repeats are known to evolve fast in yeast populations (47) and circular DNA could be an intermediate between deletions and amplifications. While we cannot rule out the possibility that we did not detect a minor fraction of the circular DNA found in the aged populations, our computational experiments suggest that we found the majority of the circular DNA present in the young, progeny and aged populations already at a 20% of the sequencing depth.
Hence, we are confident that our circular DNA loss rate is not overestimated. An example of circles with high formation rates and replication origin is the [HXT6/7 circle ] that carries a hybrid of two highaffinity hexose transporter genes from the HXT6 HXT7 locus. We have found this circle recurrently in our previous whole genome circles studies (20, 28) and the circle appears repeatedly in independent populations. Results from others have shown that glucose limitation selects for amplification of the telomeric circles ] has been unknown but our study suggests they arise primarily from the Y'-repeat in TEL12R, possibly due to the structure with two tandem Y' repeats.
We have not addressed the fate of class IV circles, which were only detected in young cells. Most of these circles might not have replicated due to the lack of origins hence only existed in the one copy recorded in the young population. Alternatively, class IV circles might have replicated rarely and could have diffused to daughter cells. Because we only recorded circular DNA from 3% of the progeny populations, our analysis will have missed these circles in the progeny. We also found that a In conclusion, our whole genome survey of circular DNA in S. cerevisiae supports three factors determine how a circular DNA is maintained in a cell lineage: the rate by which it is formed from its chromosomal locus, its ability to replicate and its mode of segregation (4). Our data suggest that 
L Y P A Y P A Y P A 5000- Telomeric T G C T A T A C T 220 C T T A T T G C T G 230 C C G Sequencing portion of Y' PCR product A C A C T A A T C A 30 G T C G A T G G G G