Abstract
Recent experiments established that a culture of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (baker's yeast) survives sudden high temperatures by specifically duplicating the entire chromosome III and two chromosomal fragments (from IV and XII). Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are not significantly over-abundant in the duplication. In contrast, we suggest a simple algorithm to " postdict " the experimental results: Find a small enough chromosome with minimal protein disorder and duplicate this region. This algorithm largely explains all observed duplications. In particular, all regions duplicated in the experiment reduced the overall content of protein disorder. The differential analysis of the functional makeup of the duplication remained inconclusive. Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment suggested over-representation in processes related to reproduction and nutrient uptake. Analyzing the protein-protein interaction network (PPI) revealed that few network-central proteins were duplicated. The predictive hypothesis hinges upon the concept of reducing proteins with long regions of disorder in order to become less sensitive to heat shock attack.
Highlights
IntroductionSaccharomyces cerevisiae (baker’s yeast; for simplicity we mostly use yeast) was the first completely sequenced eukaryote[1]
Saccharomyces cerevisiae was the first completely sequenced eukaryote[1]
We found the regions duplicated under heat stress depleted of predicted disorder
Summary
Saccharomyces cerevisiae (baker’s yeast; for simplicity we mostly use yeast) was the first completely sequenced eukaryote[1]. Being simple to handle and manipulate has rendered yeast a preferred model organism for genetics, biochemistry and systems biology[2,3,4] It grows optimally within a narrow temperature range but tolerates moderate deviations, some of which impinge upon cell structure and function, often through rapid physiological adaptations. One such adaptation mechanism is the duplication of the whole genome or particular chromosomes (aneuploidy)[5,6,7] that contain the genes necessary to rapidly cope with specific adverse conditions over the course of several generations of evolving yeast[8,9,10,11,12,13,14]. Why copy these regions? Can particular biophysical features and/or functions of the proteins encoded in these regions explain the choice?
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