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Yeasts are unicellular eukaryotic microorganisms, capable of forming of organised multicellular communities, the colonies. Many yeast strains possess a characteristic colony morphology under defined living conditions. Another feature typical for many feral and pathogenic yeast strains is the ability to switch their morphotype. This phenomenon, called the phenotypic switching, contributes to a rapid adaptation to the changing harmful environment and is often connected with changes of the stress resistance or with the changes of virulence of pathogenic yeasts. Phenotypic switching can be observed even in non-pathogenic yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The strain BR-F, isolated from nature, switches under laboratory conditions from fluffy to smooth morphology of the strain BR-S. This phenotypic switch is accompanied by broad changes in the phenotype. Transcriptome analyses of the strains BR-F and BR-S have shown, among others, changes in expression of the subtelomeric genes that are under control of the histone acetylases and deacetylases. My work was aimed to the histone deacetylase Sir2p, which could influence the phenotypic switching in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The sir2 deletion mutant of the strain BR-S, prepared in our laboratory, was used for my studies. The results show, that the strain BR-S...

Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains isolated from the wild are able to exhibit multicellular social behaviour and to form complex structured colonies resembling in many properties highly resistant biofilms of pathogenic yeasts. The capability of phenotypic variability, i.e. high frequency transition between two or more different phenotypes, is another feature typical for the wild yeast strains. Such phenotypic changes are in case of pathogenic yeast often connected with changes in virulence and resistance to stress and antifungal treatment. Long-term cultivation of the wild yeast strains under laboratory conditions leads to their domestication, i.e. transition to smooth colonies and loss of some features typical for structured colonies. This process is, similarly to phenotypic switching, accompanied by significant changes in gene expression and global change of colony lifestyle. Mechanisms underlying yeast phenotypic transitions are ascribed to epigenetic regulation of gene expression via transcriptional silencing conferred by histone deacetylases. This work deals with the study of such mechanisms using knock-outs of selected genes with putative function in formation of structured colonies in wild and domesticated strains. The achieved results show, that NAD+-dependent histone deacetylase Sir2p influences...