Project description:Fungal pathogens threaten ecosystems and human health. Understanding the molecular basis of their virulence is key to develop new treatment strategies. Here, we characterize NCS2*, a point mutation identified in a clinical baker's yeast isolate. Ncs2 is essential for 2-thiolation of tRNA and the NCS2* mutation leads to increased thiolation at body temperature. NCS2* yeast exhibits enhanced fitness when grown at elevated temperatures or when exposed to oxidative stress, inhibition of nutrient signalling, and cell-wall stress. Importantly, Ncs2* alters the interaction and stability of the thiolase complex likely mediated by nucleotide binding. The absence of 2-thiolation abrogates the in vivo virulence of pathogenic baker's yeast in infected mice. Finally, hypomodification triggers changes in colony morphology and hyphae formation in the common commensal pathogen Candida albicans resulting in decreased virulence in a human cell culture model. These findings demonstrate that 2-thiolation of tRNA acts as a key mediator of fungal virulence and reveal new mechanistic insights into the function of the highly conserved tRNA-thiolase complex.
Project description:Functional genomic analysis using different types of baker's yeast. Experiment Overall Design: Fermentation at different concentrations of sucrose. Experiment Overall Design: PerChip normalization using only positive (exclude pombe) genes and PerGene normalization were applied using GeneSpring (v7.0).
Project description:Here we report the design, construction and characterization of a tRNA neochromosome, a designer chromosome that functions as an additional, de novo counterpart to the native complement of Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosomes. Intending to address one of the central design principles of the Sc2.0 project, the ~190 kb tRNA neochromosome houses all 275 relocated nuclear tRNA genes. To maximize stability, the design incorporated orthogonal genetic elements from non-S. cerevisiae yeast species. Furthermore, the presence of 283 rox recombination sites enable an orthogonal SCRaMbLE system capable of adjusting tRNA abundance. Following construction, we obtained evidence of a potent selective force once the neochromosome was introduced into yeast cells, manifesting as a spontaneous doubling in cell ploidy. Furthermore, tRNA sequencing, transcriptomics, proteomics, nucleosome mapping, replication profiling, FISH and Hi-C were undertaken to investigate questions of tRNA neochromosome behavior and function. Its construction demonstrates the remarkable tractability of the yeast model and opens up new opportunities to directly test hypotheses surrounding these essential non-coding RNAs.
Project description:Cadmium sulphide quantum dots (CdS QDs) are widely used in novel equipment. The relevance of the research lies in the need to develop risk assessments for nanomaterials (ENMs), using baker's yeast as model system. A whole-genome microarray experiment, performed on Saccharomyces cerevisiae (BY4742), showed how genes were regulated in response to CdS QDs.
Project description:Here we report that the spatial organization of yeast tRNA genes depends upon both locus position and tRNA identity; supporting the idea that the genomic organization of tRNA loci utilizes tRNA dependent signals within the nucleoprotein-tRNA complexes that form into clusters. We use high-throughput sequencing coupled to Circular Chromosome Conformation Capture to detect interactions with two wild type tRNAs and these same positions replaced with suppressor tRNAs (SUP4-1).