Feedback control of the heat shock response by spatiotemporal regulation of Hsp70.

Cells maintain homeostasis via dynamic regulation of stress response pathways. Stress pathways transiently induce response regulons via negative feedback loops, but the extent to which individual genes provide feedback has not been comprehensively measured for any pathway. Here, we disrupted induction of each gene in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae heat shock response (HSR) and quantified cell growth and HSR dynamics following heat shock. The screen revealed a core feedback loop governing expression of the chaperone Hsp70 reinforced by an auxiliary feedback loop controlling Hsp70 subcellular localization. Mathematical modeling and live imaging demonstrated that multiple HSR targets converge to promote Hsp70 nuclear localization via its release from cytosolic condensates. Following ethanol stress, a distinct set of factors similarly converged on Hsp70, suggesting that nonredundant subsets of the HSR regulon confer feedback under different conditions. Flexible spatiotemporal feedback loops may broadly organize stress response regulons and expand their adaptive capacity.

Adaptive preservation of orphan ribosomal proteins in chaperone-dispersed condensates.

Ribosome biogenesis is among the most resource-intensive cellular processes, with ribosomal proteins accounting for up to half of all newly synthesized proteins in eukaryotic cells. During stress, cells shut down ribosome biogenesis in part by halting rRNA synthesis, potentially leading to massive accumulation of aggregation-prone 'orphan' ribosomal proteins (oRPs). Here we show that, during heat shock in yeast and human cells, oRPs accumulate as reversible peri-nucleolar condensates recognized by the Hsp70 co-chaperone Sis1/DnaJB6. oRP condensates are liquid-like in cell-free lysate but solidify upon depletion of Sis1 or inhibition of Hsp70. When cells recover from heat shock, oRP condensates disperse in a Sis1- and Hsp70-dependent manner, and the oRP constituents are incorporated into functional ribosomes in the cytosol, enabling cells to efficiently resume growth. Preserving biomolecules in reversible condensates-like mRNAs in cytosolic stress granules and oRPs at the nucleolar periphery-may be a primary function of the Hsp70 chaperone system.

Transcriptional regulation of Sis1 promotes fitness but not feedback in the heat shock response.

The heat shock response (HSR) controls expression of molecular chaperones to maintain protein homeostasis. Previously, we proposed a feedback loop model of the HSR in which heat-denatured proteins sequester the chaperone Hsp70 to activate the HSR, and subsequent induction of Hsp70 deactivates the HSR (Krakowiak et al., 2018; Zheng et al., 2016). However, recent work has implicated newly synthesized proteins (NSPs) - rather than unfolded mature proteins - and the Hsp70 co-chaperone Sis1 in HSR regulation, yet their contributions to HSR dynamics have not been determined. Here, we generate a new mathematical model that incorporates NSPs and Sis1 into the HSR activation mechanism, and we perform genetic decoupling and pulse-labeling experiments to demonstrate that Sis1 induction is dispensable for HSR deactivation. Rather than providing negative feedback to the HSR, transcriptional regulation of Sis1 by Hsf1 promotes fitness by coordinating stress granules and carbon metabolism. These results support an overall model in which NSPs signal the HSR by sequestering Sis1 and Hsp70, while induction of Hsp70 - but not Sis1 - attenuates the response.