A heritable switch in carbon source utilization driven by an unusual yeast prion
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Author(s)
Lindquist, Susan
Brown, Jessica C.S.
Date Issued
October 2009
Journal
Genes and Development
Publisher
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
Citation
Brown, Jessica C. S, and Susan Lindquist. “A heritable switch in carbon source utilization driven by an unusual yeast prion.” Genes & Development 23.19 (2009): 2320-2332. © 2009 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Several well-characterized fungal proteins act as prions, proteins capable of multiple conformations, each with different activities, at least one of which is self-propagating. Through such self-propagating changes in function, yeast prions act as protein-based elements of phenotypic inheritance. We report a prion that makes cells resistant to the glucose-associated repression of alternative carbon sources, [GAR[superscript +]] (for “resistant to glucose-associated repression,” with capital letters indicating dominance and brackets indicating its non-Mendelian character). [GAR[superscript +]] appears spontaneously at a high rate and is transmissible by non-Mendelian, cytoplasmic inheritance. Several lines of evidence suggest that the prion state involves a complex between a small fraction of the cellular complement of Pma1, the major plasma membrane proton pump, and Std1, a much lower-abundance protein that participates in glucose signaling. The Pma1 proteins from closely related Saccharomyces species are also associated with the appearance of [GAR[superscript +]]. This allowed us to confirm the relationship between Pma1, Std1, and [GAR[superscript +]] by establishing that these proteins can create a transmission barrier for prion propagation and induction in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The fact that yeast cells employ a prion-based mechanism for heritably switching between distinct carbon source utilization strategies, and employ the plasma membrane proton pump to do so, expands the biological framework in which self-propagating protein-based elements of inheritance operate.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biology
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DOI of Published Version
http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/gad.1839109
