Phosphorylation of yeast transcription factors correlates with the evolution of novel sequence and function.

Gene duplication is a significant source of novel genes and the dynamics of gene duplicate retention vs loss are poorly understood, particularly in terms of the functional and regulatory specialization of their gene products. We compiled a comprehensive data set of S. cerevisiae phosphosites to study the role of phosphorylation in yeast paralog divergence. We found that proteins coded by duplicated genes created in the Whole Genome Duplication (WGD) event and in a period prior to the WGD are significantly more phosphorylated than other duplicates or singletons. Though the amino acid sequence of each paralog of a given pair tends to diverge fairly similarly from their common ortholog in a related species, the phosphorylated amino acids tend to diverge in sequence from the ortholog at different rates. We observed that transcription factors (TFs) are disproportionately present among the set of duplicate genes and among the set of proteins that are phosphorylated. Interestingly, TFs that occur on higher levels of the transcription network hierarchy (i.e., tend to regulate other TFs) tend to be more phosphorylated than lower-level TFs. We found that TF paralog divergence in expression, binding, and sequence correlates with the abundance of phosphosites. Overall, these studies have important implications for understanding divergence of gene function and regulation in eukaryotes.

On the relation between promoter divergence and gene expression evolution.

Recent studies have characterized significant differences in the cis-regulatory sequences of related organisms, but the impact of these differences on gene expression remains largely unexplored. Here, we show that most previously identified differences in transcription factor (TF)-binding sequences of yeasts and mammals have no detectable effect on gene expression, suggesting that compensatory mechanisms allow promoters to rapidly evolve while maintaining a stabilized expression pattern. To examine the impact of changes in cis-regulatory elements in a more controlled setting, we compared the genes induced during mating of three yeast species. This response is governed by a single TF (STE12), and variations in its predicted binding sites can indeed account for about half of the observed expression differences. The remaining unexplained differences are correlated with the increased divergence of the sequences that flank the binding sites and an apparent modulation of chromatin structure. Our analysis emphasizes the flexibility of promoter structure, and highlights the interplay between specific binding sites and general chromatin structure in the control of gene expression.

Altered tethering of the SspB adaptor to the ClpXP protease causes changes in substrate delivery.

SspB is a dimeric adaptor protein that increases the rate at which ssrA-tagged substrates are degraded by tethering them to the ClpXP protease. Each SspB subunit consists of a folded domain that forms the dimer interface and a flexible C-terminal tail. Ternary delivery complexes are stabilized by three sets of tethering interactions. The C-terminal XB peptide of each SspB subunit binds ClpX, the body of SspB binds one part of the ssrA-tag sequence, and ClpX binds another part of the tag. To test the functional importance of these tethering interactions, we engineered monomeric SspB variants and dimeric variants with different length linkers between the SspB body and the XB peptide and employed substrates with degradation tags that bind ClpX weakly and/or contain extensions between the binding sites for SspB and ClpX. We find that monomeric SspB variants can enhance ClpXP degradation of a subset of substrates, that doubling the number of tethering interactions stimulates degradation via changes in Km and Vmax, and that major alterations in the length of the 48-residue SspB linker cause only small changes in the efficiency of substrate delivery. These results indicate that the properties of the degradation tag and the number of SspB.ClpX tethering interactions are the major factors that determine the extent to which the substrate and ClpX are engaged in ternary delivery complexes.