Exploring absent protein function in yeast: assaying post translational modification and human genetic variation.

Christina S Moesslacher,Johanna M Kohlmayr,Ulrich Stelzl

doi:10.15698/mic2021.08.756

Abstract

Yeast is a valuable eukaryotic model organism that has evolved many processes conserved up to humans, yet many protein functions, including certain DNA and protein modifications, are absent. It is this absence of protein function that is fundamental to approaches using yeast as an in vivo test system to investigate human proteins. Functionality of the heterologous expressed proteins is connected to a quantitative, selectable phenotype, enabling the systematic analyses of mechanisms and specificity of DNA modification, post-translational protein modifications as well as the impact of annotated cancer mutations and coding variation on protein activity and interaction. Through continuous improvements of yeast screening systems, this is increasingly carried out on a global scale using deep mutational scanning approaches. Here we discuss the applicability of yeast systems to investigate absent human protein function with a specific focus on the impact of protein variation on protein-protein interaction modulation.

Highlights

Yeasts, in particular Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe, are key eukaryotic model organisms in molecular and cell biology research
Through continuous improvement of yeast systems and substantial advances in genome scale screening approaches, yeast serves as a prime tool in molecular biology and human genetics
On the other hand, using deep mutational scanning in protein interaction research provides a uniform, more general approach to study the impact of genetic variation on cellular protein function

Summary

Introduction

In particular Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe, are key eukaryotic model organisms in molecular and cell biology research. With its simple growth phenotypes and growth-based yeast-two hybrid (Y2H), protein complementation or transcriptional reporter assays, yeast has been resuscitated as a powerful tool to study human genetic variation providing most comprehensive functional fitness profiles across all single amino acid mutations of a protein.

Results

Conclusion