New insights into the Saccharomyces cerevisiae fermentation switch: dynamic transcriptional response to anaerobicity and glucose-excess

• Published in: BMC genomics Vol. 9; no. 1; p. 100
• Main Authors: van den Brink, Joost, Daran-Lapujade, Pascale, Pronk, Jack T, de Winde, Johannes H
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BioMed Central Ltd 27.02.2008; BioMed Central; BMC
• Subjects: Anaerobiosis; Brewer's yeast; Fermentation; Gene Expression Profiling; Gene Expression Regulation, Fungal - drug effects; Genetic aspects; Genetic transcription; Glucose - metabolism; Glucose - pharmacology; Health aspects; Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; Oxygen - metabolism; Oxygen - pharmacology; Saccharomyces cerevisiae - drug effects; Saccharomyces cerevisiae - genetics; Saccharomyces cerevisiae - metabolism; Transcription, Genetic - drug effects; Netherlands
• ISSN: 1471-2164; 1471-2164
• DOI: 10.1186/1471-2164-9-100

The capacity of respiring cultures of Saccharomyces cerevisiae to immediately switch to fast alcoholic fermentation upon a transfer to anaerobic sugar-excess conditions is a key characteristic of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in many of its industrial applications. This transition was studied by exposing aerobic glucose-limited chemostat cultures grown at a low specific growth rate to two simultaneous perturbations: oxygen depletion and relief of glucose limitation. The shift towards fully fermentative conditions caused a massive transcriptional reprogramming, where one third of all genes within the genome were transcribed differentially. The changes in transcript levels were mostly driven by relief from glucose-limitation. After an initial strong response to the addition of glucose, the expression profile of most transcriptionally regulated genes displayed a clear switch at 30 minutes. In this respect, a striking difference was observed between the transcript profiles of genes encoding ribosomal proteins and those encoding ribosomal biogenesis components. Not all regulated genes responded with this binary profile. A group of 87 genes showed a delayed and steady increase in expression that specifically responded to anaerobiosis. Our study demonstrated that, despite the complexity of this multiple-input perturbation, the transcriptional responses could be categorized and biologically interpreted. By comparing this study with public datasets representing dynamic and steady conditions, 14 up-regulated and 11 down-regulated genes were determined to be anaerobic specific. Therefore, these can be seen as true "signature" transcripts for anaerobicity under dynamic as well as under steady state conditions.