The Yeast Prion [SWI+] Abolishes Multicellular Growth by Triggering Conformational Changes of Multiple Regulators Required for Flocculin Gene Expression

Zhiqiang Du, Ying Zhang, Liming Li

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

36 Scopus citations

Abstract

Although transcription factors are prevalent among yeast prion proteins, the role of prion-mediated transcriptional regulation remains elusive. Here, we show that the yeast prion [SWI+] abolishes flocculin (FLO) gene expression and results in a complete loss of multicellularity. Further investigation demonstrates that besides Swi1, multiple other proteins essential for FLO expression, including Mss11, Sap30, and Msn1 also undergo conformational changes and become inactivated in [SWI+] cells. Moreover, the asparagine-rich region of Mss11 can exist as prion-like aggregates specifically in [SWI+] cells, which are SDS resistant, heritable, and curable, but become metastable after separation from [SWI+]. Our findings thus reveal a prion-mediated mechanism through which multiple regulators in a biological pathway can be inactivated. In combination with the partial loss-of-function phenotypes of [SWI+] cells on non-glucose sugar utilization, our data therefore demonstrate that a prion can influence distinct traits differently through multi-level regulations, providing insights into the biological roles of prions.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)2865-2878
Number of pages14
JournalCell reports
Volume13
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 29 2015

Funding

The authors thank Dr. G. Braus (Georg August University Göttingen, Institute for Microbiology and Genetics) for the gift of strains and plasmids as well as S. Valtierra and D. Goncharoff for critical comments and manuscript editing. This work was supported by grants from the NIH (R01NS056086 and R01GM10045) and National Science Foundation (MCB 1122135) to L.L. and the China Scholarship Council (file no. [2012]3022-201208110572) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (81100809 and 81271417) to Y.Z.

Keywords

  • SWI/SNF
  • Saccharomyces cerevisiae
  • Swi1
  • amyloids
  • filamentous growth
  • flocculin
  • multicellularity
  • prion
  • protein conformation change
  • protein-aggregation
  • yeast

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

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