Checkpoints in a Yeast Differentiation Pathway Coordinate Signaling during Hyperosmotic Stress

All eukaryotes have the ability to detect and respond to environmental and hormonal signals. In many cases these signals evoke cellular changes that are incompatible and must therefore be orchestrated by the responding cell. In the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, hyperosmotic stress and mating pheromones initiate signaling cascades that each terminate with a MAP kinase, Hog1 and Fus3, respectively. Despite sharing components, these pathways are initiated by distinct inputs and produce distinct cellular behaviors. To understand how these responses are coordinated, we monitored the pheromone response during hyperosmotic conditions. We show that hyperosmotic stress limits pheromone signaling in at least three ways. First, stress delays the expression of pheromone-induced genes. Second, stress promotes the phosphorylation of a protein kinase, Rck2, and thereby inhibits pheromone-induced protein translation. Third, stress promotes the phosphorylation of a shared pathway component, Ste50, and thereby dampens pheromone-induced MAPK activation. Whereas all three mechanisms are dependent on an increase in osmolarity, only the phosphorylation events require Hog1. These findings reveal how an environmental stress signal is able to postpone responsiveness to a competing differentiation signal, by acting on multiple pathway components, in a coordinated manner

Ser/Thr/Tyr Protein Phosphorylation in the Archaeon Halobacterium salinarum—A Representative of the Third Domain of Life

In the quest for the origin and evolution of protein phosphorylation, the major regulatory post-translational modification in eukaryotes, the members of archaea, the “third domain of life”, play a protagonistic role. A plethora of studies have demonstrated that archaeal proteins are subject to post-translational modification by covalent phosphorylation, but little is known concerning the identities of the proteins affected, the impact on their functionality, the physiological roles of archaeal protein phosphorylation/dephosphorylation, and the protein kinases/phosphatases involved. These limited studies led to the initial hypothesis that archaea, similarly to other prokaryotes, use mainly histidine/aspartate phosphorylation, in their two-component systems representing a paradigm of prokaryotic signal transduction, while eukaryotes mostly use Ser/Thr/Tyr phosphorylation for creating highly sophisticated regulatory networks. In antithesis to the above hypothesis, several studies showed that Ser/Thr/Tyr phosphorylation is also common in the bacterial cell, and here we present the first genome-wide phosphoproteomic analysis of the model organism of archaea, Halobacterium salinarum, proving the existence/conservation of Ser/Thr/Tyr phosphorylation in the “third domain” of life, allowing a better understanding of the origin and evolution of the so-called “Nature's premier” mechanism for regulating the functional properties of proteins

Integrative analysis of osmoregulation in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Similar to other unicellular organisms, yeasts frequently encounter environmental stress such as heat shock, osmotic stress, and nutrition limitations, which challenge their growth potential. To survive, all living cells must be able to adapt to changes in their surrounding environment. A set of adaptive responses is triggered that leads to repair of cellular damage in order to overcome these stress conditions. The aim of this thesis is to determine how yeast cells respond to changes in osmolarity and water activity. Upon hyperosmotic shock, water flows out of the cell, resulting in cell shrinkage, and consequently an increase in the concentrations of all substances present in the cytoplasm. Cells adapt their internal osmolarity by gaining an appropriate cell volume as well as an internal water concentration that is optimal for biochemical processes to recover turgor pressure. Osmoregulation is an active process which is mainly regulated by the High Osmolarity Glycerol (HOG) pathway and controls the cellular water balance. The HOG pathway is one of the four yeast MAP kinase pathways. It conveys the hyper osmolarity stress stimulus into the cell machinery and instigates appropriate responses, including global readjustment of gene expression, changes in translational capacity, transient cell cycle arrest, and accumulation of the compatible solute glycerol. Together, these processes result in osmoadaptation. In this thesis I investigated the quantitative characteristics of osmoregulation in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. I applied a combination of traditional molecular approaches and frontline technologies for comprehensive and quantitative measurements, such as high throughput experiments, synthetic biology, single cell analysis and mathematical modeling to understand the interdependence and timeline of different osmoadaptation process