Project description:The aim of this study was to reveal the genomic response of yeast cells to the related mycotoxins citrinin (CIT) and ochratoxin A (OTA). Both mycotoxins can be produced by the same filamentous fungi and co-contaminate the same foodstuff. However, it is not known whether CIT and OTA share the same toxicity mechanisms or not. We performed transcriptomic profiling experiments using microarray hybridization of a pdr5 mutant strain exposed separately to CIT or OTA and exposed to a combination of both toxins. A yeast pdr5 mutant was used, because it is significantly sensitized to both toxins. We find that CIT and OTA cause the rapid activation of largely non-overlapping gene sets. The most prominent functional group of CIT-activated genes corresponds to the cellular response to oxidative stress, while OTA-activated genes belong predominantly to single organism developmental processes and meiosis/sporulation. The combined exposure of CIT and OTA revealed a mixed response of functional gene groups. Our results demonstrate that CIT and OTA have distinguishable and independent biological effects with oxidative stress being a hallmark for CIT toxicity and the deregulation of developmental genes being the principal feature for OTA toxicity.
Project description:Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder. Oligomers of Amyloid-β peptides (Aβ) are thought to play a pivotal role in AD pathogenesis, yet the mechanisms involved remain unclear. Two major isoforms of Aβ associated with AD are Aβ40 and Aβ42, the latter being more prone to form oligomers and toxic. Humanized yeast models are currently applied to unravel the cellular mechanisms behind Aβ toxicity. Here, we took a systems biology approach to study two yeast AD models which expressed either Aβ40 or Aβ42 in bioreactor cultures. Strict control of oxygen availability and culture pH, strongly affected the chronological lifespan and reduced confounding effects of variations during cell growth. Reduced growth rates and biomass yields were observed upon expression of Aβ42, indicating a redirection of energy from growth to maintenance. Quantitative physiology analyses furthermore revealed reduced mitochondrial functionality and ATP generation in Aβ42 expressing cells, which matched with observed aberrant fragmented mitochondrial structures. Genome-wide expression levels analysis showed that Aβ42 expression triggers strong ER stress and unfolded protein responses (UPR). Expression of Aβ40 induced only mild ER stress, leading to activation of UPR target genes that cope with misfolded proteins, which resulted in hardly affected physiology. The combination of well-controlled cultures and AD yeast models strengthen our understanding of how cells translate different levels of Aβ toxicity signals into particular cell fate programs, and further enhance their role as a discovery platform to identify potential therapies.
Project description:Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is hallmarked by progressive neurodegeneration. Aggregation of amyloid-β peptides (Aβ) is thought to play a pivotal role in driving AD pathogenesis, yet the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we use yeast genome-scale screening to study global synthetic genetic interactions and identify toxicity modifiers of Aβ42. We find that the gene encoding riboflavin kinase (FMN1) and its metabolic product flavin mononucleotide (FMN) are connected to AD. These relationship between Aβ42 and FMN was previously unknown. As a cofactor for flavoenzymes, FMN supplementation appears to attune many cellular processes to ameliorate Aβ42 toxicity. RNA-seq analysis further confirms FMN’s cytoprotective mechanisms. Our findings provide increased understanding of FMN regulated cellular pathways which are associated with potential targets for AD treatment.
Project description:The availability of yeast DNA microarrays provides the possibility of monitoring gene expression levels as a function to toxin exposure, and consequently as a means of determining mechanisms of toxicity. This system possesses the benefit of the essential volume of yeast cultures, the high reproducibility of expression profiles, and the massive functional information. Because small amount of biological sample cultures are required for this analysis, toxicity test for rare chemical such as mycotoxins which is a natural compound and difficult to be artificially synthesized. Citrinin [518-75-2], 4,6-dihydro-8-hydroxy-3,4,5-trimethyl-6-oxo-3H-2-benzopyran-7-crboxylic acid, is the one of the popular mycotoxicin produced by Penicillium and Aspergillus family possibly spread all over the world. This natural chemicals is one of the well characterized mycotoxin but the information especially mechanism of toxic action is limited. We used two types of microarrays, one have ORF (Open reading Frame) fragment on the surface of the glass as probes and the other have probes as oligonucleotide probes on the microarray with 3 dimensions. We compared data properties and studied the toxicity of citrinin to yeast cells. Keywords: stress response Series containes 3 hybridization results from independent biological samples, and each experiment have high and low power scanned data respectively.
Project description:We report the transcriptome and miRNAome of human embryonic kidney 293 cells upon the administration of ochratoxin A (OTA) and citrinin (CTN), to compare the individual and combined toxicity of these two mycotoxins. We identified largely differentially expressed miRNAs and corresponding genes, and the correlations between miRNAs and their target genes associated with apoptotic signaling were furthermore analyzed by pmi-RB-REPORT luciferase assay system. We concluded that hsa-miR-1-3p plays an essential role in promoting OTA and CTN-induced renal cytotoxicity.
Project description:The availability of yeast DNA microarrays provides the possibility of monitoring gene expression levels as a function to toxin exposure, and consequently as a means of determining mechanisms of toxicity. This system possesses the benefit of the essential volume of yeast cultures, the high reproducibility of expression profiles, and the massive functional information. Because small amount of biological sample cultures are required for this analysis, toxicity test for rare chemical such as mycotoxins which is a natural compound and difficult to be artificially synthesized. Citrinin [518-75-2], 4,6-dihydro-8-hydroxy-3,4,5-trimethyl-6-oxo-3H-2-benzopyran-7-crboxylic acid, is the one of the popular mycotoxicin produced by Penicillium and Aspergillus family possibly spread all over the world. This natural chemicals is one of the well characterized mycotoxin but the information especially mechanism of toxic action is limited. We used two types of microarrays, one have ORF (Open reading Frame) fragment on the surface of the glass as probes and the other have probes as oligonucleotide probes on the microarray with 3 dimensions. We compared data properties and studied the toxicity of citrinin to yeast cells. Keywords: stress response Biological samples were prepared from 3 independent experiments. Hybridization were done triplicate in each sample-control set. Sample labeling were swapped between 1st hybridization (control = Cy5, sample = Cy3) and 2nd and 3rd hybridization (control = Cy3, sample = Cy5).
Project description:Thorium (232Th), an actinoide element, is among the most common and naturally occurring radioactive materials distributed in our environment. Thorium has been used as a radiographic contrast agent (thorotrast) from 1930 to 1955, and many studies on its effects to the human body have been reported. Once thorium is injected in the body, the risk of cancer is increased by the direct bombardment from alpha-particle with high linear energy transfer during decay of Thorium. However, these many reports focus on the irradiation damage by long-term exposure of thorium. The acute toxicity of thorium is greater risk from the chemical toxicity than from the radiological toxicity. Here, we evaluated the effect of thorium from the stand point of chemical toxicity using yeast DNA microarray. In this experiment, genes that contribute to “C-compound and carbohydrate metabolism”, “energy”, and “cell rescue, defense and virulence” were significantly induced. These genes were classified into oxidative stress, glycogen and trehalose metabolism, sugar transport, and cell wall damage. On the contrary, only one gene related to DNA damage was detected. These results indicate that thorium causes the damage of cell wall and induces the oxidative stress. In order to overcome oxidative stress, yeast cells promote the glycogen and trehalose metabolisms and shift to anaerobic fermentation. Keywords: stress response
Project description:Second fermentation in a bottle supposes such specific conditions that undergo yeasts to a set of stress situations like high ethanol, low nitrogen, low pH or sub-optimal temperature. Also, yeast have to grow until 1 or 2 generations and ferment all sugar available while they resist increasing CO2 pressure produced along with fermentation. Because of this, yeast for second fermentation must be selected depending on different technological criteria such as resistance to ethanol, pressure, high flocculation capacity, and good autolytic and foaming properties. All of these stress factors appear sequentially or simultaneously, and their superposition could amplify their inhibitory effects over yeast growth. Considering all of the above, it has supposed interesting to characterize the adaptive response of commercial yeast strain EC1118 during second-fermentation experiments under oenological/industrial conditions by transcriptomic profiling. We have pointed ethanol as the most relevant environmental condition in the induction of genes involved in respiratory metabolism, oxidative stress, autophagy, vacuolar and peroxisomal function, after comparison between time-course transcriptomic analysis in alcoholic fermentation and transcriptomic profiling in second fermentation. Other examples of parallelism include overexpression of cellular homeostasis and sugar metabolism genes. Finally, this study brings out the role of low-temperature on yeast physiology during second-fermentation.