Light-Stress Response Mediated by the Transcription Factor KlMga2 in the Yeast Kluyveromyces lactis.

In unicellular organisms like yeasts, which do not have specialized tissues for protection against environmental challenges, the presence of cellular mechanisms to respond and adapt to stress conditions is fundamental. In this work, we aimed to investigate the response to environmental light in Kluyveromyces lactis. Yeast lacks specialized light-sensing proteins; however, Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been reported to respond to light by increasing hydrogen peroxide level and triggering nuclear translocation of Msn2. This is a stress-sensitive transcription factor also present in K. lactis. To investigate light response in this yeast, we analyzed the different phenotypes generated by the deletion of the hypoxia responsive and lipid biosynthesis transcription factor KlMga2. Alterations in growth rate, mitochondrial functioning, ROS metabolism, and fatty acid biosynthesis provide evidence that light was a source of stress in K. lactis and that KlMga2 had a role in the light-stress response. The involvement of KlMsn2 and KlCrz1 in light stress was also explored, but the latter showed no function in this response.

Phenotypic suppression caused by resonance with light-dark cycles indicates the presence of a 24-hours oscillator in yeast and suggests a new role of intrinsically disordered protein regions as internal mediators.

The mutual interaction between environment and life is a main topic of biological sciences. An interesting aspect of this interaction is the existence of biological rhythms spanning all the levels of organisms from bacteria to humans. On the other hand, the existence of a coupling between external oscillatory stimuli and adaptation and evolution rate of biological systems is a still unexplored issue. Here we give the demonstration of a substantial increase of heritable phenotypic changes in yeast, an organism lacking a photoreception system, when growing at 12 h light/dark cycles, with respect to both stable dark (or light) or non-12 + 12 h cycling. The model system was a yeast strain lacking a gene whose product is at the crossroad of many different physiological regulations, so ruling out any simple explanation in terms of increase in reverse gene mutations. The abundance of intrinsically disordered protein regions (IDPRs) in both deleted gene product and in its vast ensemble of interactors supports the hypothesis that resonance with the environmental cycle might be mediated by intrinsic disorder-driven interactions of protein molecules. This result opens to the speculation of the effect of environment/biological resonance phenomena in evolution and of the role of protein intrinsically disordered regions as internal mediators.Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma.

The hypoxic transcription factor KlMga2 mediates the response to oxidative stress and influences longevity in the yeast Kluyveromyces lactis.

Hypoxia is defined as the decline of oxygen availability, depending on environmental supply and cellular consumption rate. The decrease in O2 results in reduction of available energy in facultative aerobes. The response and/or adaptation to hypoxia and other changing environmental conditions can influence the properties and functions of membranes by modifying lipid composition. In the yeast Kluyveromyces lactis, the KlMga2 gene is a hypoxic regulatory factor for lipid biosynthesis-fatty acids and sterols-and is also involved in glucose signaling, glucose catabolism and is generally important for cellular fitness. In this work we show that, in addition to the above defects, the absence of the KlMGA2 gene caused increased resistance to oxidative stress and extended lifespan of the yeast, associated with increased expression levels of catalase and SOD genes. We propose that KlMga2 might also act as a mediator of the oxidative stress response/adaptation, thus revealing connections among hypoxia, glucose signaling, fatty acid biosynthesis and ROS metabolism in K. lactis.

Three, two, one yeast fatty acid desaturases: regulation and function.

Fatty acid composition of biological membranes functionally adapts to environmental conditions by changing its composition through the activity of lipid biosynthetic enzymes, including the fatty acid desaturases. Three major desaturases are present in yeasts, responsible for the generation of double bonds in position C9-C10, C12-C13 and C15-C16 of the carbon backbone. In this review, we will report data addressed to define the functional role of basidiomycete and ascomycete yeast desaturase enzymes in response to various external signals and the regulation of the expression of their corresponding genes. Many yeast species have the complete set of three desaturases; however, only the Δ9 desaturase seems to be necessary and sufficient to ensure yeast viability. The evolutionary issue of this observation will be discussed.

Functional roles of the fatty acid desaturases encoded by KlOLE1, FAD2 and FAD3 in the yeast Kluyveromyces lactis.

Functional properties of cell membranes depend on their composition, particularly on the relative amount of saturated, unsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids present in the phospholipids. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of cell membrane composition on cell fitness, adaptation and stress response in Kluyveromyces lactis. To this purpose, we have deleted the genes FAD2 and FAD3 encoding Δ12 and ω3 desaturases in Kluyveromyces lactis, thus generating mutant strains with altered fatty acid composition of membranes. These strains were viable and able to grow in stressing conditions like hypoxia and low temperature. Deletion of the Δ9 desaturase-encoding gene KlOLE1 resulted in lethality, suggesting that this enzyme has an essential role in this yeast. Transcription of the desaturase genes KlOLE1, FAD2 and FAD3 and cellular localization of the corresponding enzymes, have been studied under hypoxia and cold stress. Our findings indicate that expression of these desaturase genes and membrane composition were modulated by hypoxia and temperature stress, although the changes induced by these and other assayed conditions did not dramatically affect the general cellular fitness.

Unsaturated fatty acids-dependent linkage between respiration and fermentation revealed by deletion of hypoxic regulatory KlMGA2 gene in the facultative anaerobe-respiratory yeast Kluyveromyces lactis.

In the yeast Kluyveromyces lactis, the inactivation of structural or regulatory glycolytic and fermentative genes generates obligate respiratory mutants which can be characterized by sensitivity to the mitochondrial drug antimycin A on glucose medium (Rag(-) phenotype). Rag(-) mutations can occasionally be generated by the inactivation of genes not evidently related to glycolysis or fermentation. One such gene is the hypoxic regulatory gene KlMGA2. In this work, we report a study of the many defects, in addition to the Rag(-) phenotype, generated by KlMGA2 deletion. We analyzed the fermentative and respiratory metabolism, mitochondrial functioning and morphology in the Klmga2Δ strain. We also examined alterations in the regulation of the expression of lipid biosynthetic genes, in particular fatty acids, ergosterol and cardiolipin, under hypoxic and cold stress and the phenotypic suppression by unsaturated fatty acids of the deleted strain. Results indicate that, despite the fact that the deleted mutant strain had a typical glycolytic/fermentative phenotype and KlMGA2 is a hypoxic regulatory gene, the deletion of this gene generated defects linked to mitochondrial functions suggesting new roles of this protein in the general regulation and cellular fitness of K. lactis. Supplementation of unsaturated fatty acids suppressed or modified these defects suggesting that KlMga2 modulates membrane functioning or membrane-associated functions, both cytoplasmic and mitochondrial.

Autoregulation of the Kluyveromyces lactis pyruvate decarboxylase gene KlPDC1 involves the regulatory gene RAG3.

In the yeast Kluyveromyces lactis, the pyruvate decarboxylase gene KlPDC1 is strongly regulated at the transcription level by different environmental factors. Sugars and hypoxia act as inducers of transcription, while ethanol acts as a repressor. Their effects are mediated by gene products, some of which have been characterized. KlPDC1 transcription is also strongly repressed by its product--KlPdc1--through a mechanism called autoregulation. We performed a genetic screen that allowed us to select and identify the regulatory gene RAG3 as a major factor in the transcriptional activity of the KlPDC1 promoter in the absence of the KlPdc1 protein, i.e. in the autoregulatory mechanism. We also showed that the two proteins Rag3 and KlPdc1 interact, co-localize in the cell and that KlPdc1 may control Rag3 nuclear localization.

A dual signalling pathway for the hypoxic expression of lipid genes, dependent on the glucose sensor Rag4, is revealed by the analysis of the KlMGA2 gene in Kluyveromyces lactis.

In the respiratory yeast Kluyveromyces lactis, little is known about the factors regulating the metabolic response to oxygen shortage. After searching for homologues of characterized Saccharomyces cerevisiae regulators of the hypoxic response, we identified a gene that we named KlMGA2, which is homologous to MGA2. The deletion of KlMGA2 strongly reduced both the fermentative and respiratory growth rate and altered fatty acid composition and the unsaturation index of membranes. The reciprocal heterologous expression of MGA2 and KlMGA2 in the corresponding deletion mutant strains suggested that Mga2 and KlMga2 are functional homologues. KlMGA2 transcription was induced by hypoxia and the glucose sensor Rag4 mediated the hypoxic induction of KlMGA2. Transcription of lipid biosynthetic genes KlOLE1, KlERG1, KlFAS1 and KlATF1 was induced by hypoxia and was dependent on KlMga2, except for KlOLE1. Rag4 was required for hypoxic induction of transcription for both KlMga2-dependent (KlERG1) and KlMga2-independent (KlOLE1) structural genes.

Synchronous protein cycling in batch cultures of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae at log growth phase.

The assumption that cells are temporally organized systems, i.e. showing relevant dynamics of their state variables such as gene expression or protein and metabolite concentration, while tacitly given for granted at the molecular level, is not explicitly taken into account when interpreting biological experimental data. This conundrum stems from the (undemonstrated) assumption that a cell culture, the actual object of biological experimentation, is a population of billions of independent oscillators (cells) randomly experiencing different phases of their cycles and thus not producing relevant coordinated dynamics at the population level. Moreover the fact of considering reproductive cycle as by far the most important cyclic process in a cell resulted in lower attention given to other rhythmic processes. Here we demonstrate that growing yeast cells show a very repeatable and robust cyclic variation of the concentration of proteins with different cellular functions. We also report experimental evidence that the mechanism governing this basic oscillator and the cellular entrainment is resistant to external chemical constraints. Finally, cell growth is accompanied by cyclic dynamics of medium pH. These cycles are observed in batch cultures, different from the usual continuous cultures in which yeast metabolic cycles are known to occur, and suggest the existence of basic, spontaneous, collective and synchronous behaviors of the cell population as a whole.

Optimization of recombinant fungal laccase production with strains of the yeast Kluyveromyces lactis from the pyruvate decarboxylase promoter.

Laccases are multicopper oxidases of wide specificity that catalyze the oxidation of phenolic and related compounds using molecular oxygen as the electron acceptor. Here, we report the production of the Lcc1 laccase of the fungus Trametes trogii in strains of the yeast Kluyveromyces lactis, using the pyruvate decarboxylase promoter (KlPDC1) as an expression system. We assayed laccase production in various strains, with replicative and integrative transformants and with different cultivation parameters. A comparison with Lcc1 enzymes from other yeasts and from the original organism was also performed. The best production conditions were obtained with integrative transformants of an individual strain, whereas cultivation conditions were less stringent than the use of the regulated KlPDC1 promoter could anticipate. The secreted recombinant laccase showed better enzyme properties than the native enzyme or recombinant enzyme from other yeasts. We conclude that selected K. lactis strains, with opportune physiological properties and transcription regulation of the heterologous gene, could be optimal hosts for laccase isoenzyme production.

Cesium chloride sensing and signaling in Saccharomyces cerevisiae: an interplay among the HOG and CWI MAPK pathways and the transcription factor Yaf9.

In yeast, many environmental stimuli are sensed and signaled by the MAP kinases pathways. In a previous work, we showed that cesium chloride activates the HOG pathway and modulates the transcription of several genes, especially those involved in cell wall biosynthesis and organization. The response to cesium was largely overlapping with the response to salt and osmotic stress. However, when low cesium chloride concentrations were used, a specific response was eventually elicited. The cesium-specific response involved the Yaf9 protein and its activity of chromatin remodeling and transcription regulation. In this paper we show that the osmotic activity of cesium salt is detected and signaled by the two branches downstream of the Sln1 and Sho1 sensors of the HOG pathway, that seem to possess different but exchangeables functions in cesium signaling. However, the cesium-specific response mediated by Yaf9, that counteracts the efficiency of the HOG pathway, is not routed by these sensors. In addition, the cesium response also involves the cell wall integrity (CWI) pathway, which is activated by low concentration of cesium chloride. Mutations blocking the CWI pathway show sensitivity to this salt.

Collective behavior in gene regulation: metabolic clocks and cross-talking.

Biological functions governed by the circadian clock are the evident result of the entrainment operated by the earth's day and night cycle on living organisms. However, the circadian clock is not unique, and cells and organisms possess many other cyclic activities. These activities are difficult to observe if carried out by single cells and the cells are not coordinated but, if they can be detected, cell-to-cell cross-talk and synchronization among cells must exist. Some of these cycles are metabolic and cell synchronization is due to small molecules acting as metabolic messengers. We propose a short survey of cellular cycles, paying special attention to metabolic cycles and cellular cross-talking, particularly when the synchronization of metabolism or, more generally, cellular functions are concerned. Questions arising from the observation of phenomena based on cell communication and from basic cellular cycles are also proposed.

Role of Hog1 and Yaf9 in the transcriptional response of Saccharomyces cerevisiae to cesium chloride.

We analyzed the global transcriptional response of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells exposed to different concentrations of CsCl in the growth medium and at different times after addition. Early responsive genes were mainly involved in cell wall structure and biosynthesis. About half of the induced genes were previously shown to respond to other alkali metal cations in a Hog1-dependent fashion. Western blot analysis confirmed that cesium concentrations as low as 100 mM activate Hog1 phosphorylation. Another important fraction of the cesium-modulated genes requires Yaf9p for full responsiveness as shown by the transcriptome of a yaf9-deleted strain in the presence of cesium. We showed that a cell wall-restructuring process promptly occurs in response to cesium addition, which is dependent on the presence of both Hog1 and Yaf9 proteins. Moreover, the sensitivity to low concentration of cesium of the yaf9-deleted strain is not observed in a strain carrying the hog1/yaf9 double deletion. We conclude that the observed early transcriptional modulation of cell wall genes has a crucial role in S. cerevisiae adaptation to cesium.

Mutations of the RAG3 gene encoding a regulator of fermentation in Kluyveromyces lactis are suppressed by a mutation of the transcription factor gene KlGCR1.

In Kluyveromyces lactis, Rag3 regulates both fermentative metabolism and thiamine biosynthesis. Regulation of fermentation is exerted at the level of transcription of KlPDC1. We have isolated and identified a mutation of the transcription factor KlGCR1, Klgcr1-1, which suppressed the fermentative-deficient phenotype associated with the RAG3 deletion. In the mutant, the transcription of KlPDC1 was restored. However, we found that the suppression was not specific to the RAG3 mutation, as the Klgcr1-1 mutation could also suppress the fermentative defect associated with mutation of Sck1, another regulator of glycolysis.

Gene expression waves. Cell cycle independent collective dynamics in cultured cells.

The ergodic hypothesis, which assumes the independence of each cell of the ensemble from all the others, is a necessary prerequisite to attach single cell based explanations to the grand averages taken from population data. This was the prevailing view about the interpretation of cellular biology experiments that typically are performed on colonies of billions of cells. By analysing gene expression data of different cells going from yeast to mammalian cell cultures, we demonstrate that cell cultures display a sort of "ecology-in-a-plate" giving rise to a rich dynamics of gene expression that are independent from reproductive cycles, hence contradicting simple ergodic assumptions The aspecific character of the observed coordinated gene expression activity inhibits any simple mechanistic hypothesis and highlights the need to consider population effects in the interpretation of data coming from cell cultures.

Induction by hypoxia of heterologous-protein production with the KlPDC1 promoter in yeasts.

The control of promoter activity by oxygen availability appears to be an intriguing system for heterologous protein production. In fact, during cell growth in a bioreactor, an oxygen shortage is easily obtained simply by interrupting the air supply. The purpose of our work was to explore the possible use of hypoxic induction of the KlPDC1 promoter to direct heterologous gene expression in yeast. In the present study, an expression system based on the KlPDC1 promoter was developed and characterized. Several heterologous proteins, differing in size, origin, localization, and posttranslational modification, were successfully expressed in Kluyveromyces lactis under the control of the wild type or a modified promoter sequence, with a production ratio between 4 and more than 100. Yields were further optimized by a more accurate control of hypoxic physiological conditions. Production of as high as 180 mg/liter of human interleukin-1beta was obtained, representing the highest value obtained with yeasts in a lab-scale bioreactor to date. Moreover, the transferability of our system to related yeasts was assessed. The lacZ gene from Escherichia coli was cloned downstream of the KlPDC1 promoter in order to get beta-galactosidase activity in response to induction of the promoter. A centromeric vector harboring this expression cassette was introduced in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and in Zygosaccharomyces bailii, and effects of hypoxic induction were measured and compared to those already observed in K. lactis cells. Interestingly, we found that the induction still worked in Z. bailii; thus, this promotor constitutes a possible inducible system for this new nonconventional host.

Production of glucoamylase in pyruvate decarboxylase deletion mutants of the yeast Kluyveromyces lactis.

Yeasts are widely used as hosts for the production of diverse heterologous proteins ranging from laboratory scale to industrial scale. The aim of this work is to provide new tools for the production of heterologous proteins in the yeast Kluyveromyces lactis. The promoter of the single gene (KlPDC1) encoding pyruvate decarboxylase is strong, inducible, and responsive to the presence of fermentable sugars and anoxic conditions in this yeast. Expression of KlPDC1 is repressed by ethanol and by autoregulation, a mechanism that involves protein KlPdc1. We constructed a heterologous gene expression cassette for a secreted protein (glucoamylase, GAM) under the control of the KlPDC1 promoter on a stable multicopy plasmid. GAM production by wild-type transformed strains was compared with that of klpdc1-deleted transformants. We obtained higher GAM production in the latter strains, which was due to continued expression of the GAM gene during the stationary phase rather than due to GAM transcription levels higher than the wild-type strains during growth phase. This finding opens new perspectives on the physiology of the stationary phase in K. lactis and suggests the possibility of using high-cell-density approaches for the efficient production of heterologous proteins with this yeast.

The bromodomain-containing protein Bdf1p acts as a phenotypic and transcriptional multicopy suppressor of YAF9 deletion in yeast.

It was observed previously that the deletion of the open reading frame YNL107w (YAF9) was highly pleiotropic in yeast and caused defective growth phenotypes in the presence of several unrelated inhibitors, including caesium chloride. We have selected multicopy extragenic suppressor genes, revealing that this phenotype can be suppressed by overdosing the transcription factors BDF1 and GAT1 in the yaf9Delta strain. We focused our analysis on suppression by BDF1 and performed a genome-wide transcript analysis on a yaf9Delta strain, compared with the wild-type and BDF1-suppressed strains. YAF9 deletion has a clear effect on transcription and leads to modulation of the level of expression of several genes. Transcription of a considerable portion of the underexpressed genes is restored to wild-type levels in the BDF1-suppressed strain. We show by chromatin immunoprecipitation that both Yaf9p and Bdf1p bind to promoters of some of these genes and that the level of H3 and H4 acetylation at one of these promoters is significantly lowered in the yaf9 deleted strain, compared with the wild-type and the BDF1-suppressed strains.