Saccharomyces cerevisiae has developed mechanisms in order to survive harsh environmental conditions. This species responds to stresses such as ethanol, heat, and weak acid exposure via two well-characterized stress response pathways. These typically involve either the Hsf1p or the Msn2/4p transcriptional regulators. Recently, our lab has begun to characterize a member of the zinc cluster protein family: Asg1p (Activator of Stress Genes, systematic name: YIL130W), which is presumed to stimulate stress response genes independently of the Hsflp and Msn2/4p pathways. Previous work has revealed five target genes of Asg1p (HSP30, STP4, YER130C, TPO2, YRO2) thought to be involved in this novel stress response pathway. In this study, we attempted to better characterize the role of Asg1p and its target genes during stress induction. We first determined if the induction of certain Asg1p target genes by stress is strain specific. HSP30 induction by heat shock is specific to the W303 strain as shown by primer extension analysis. We then generated the deletion strains Deltaasg1 and Astp4 in W303. We observed a loss of induction of HSP30 in the Deltaasg1 deletion strain when cells were exposed to ethanol. This led us to believe that Asg1p does play a role in the stress response pathway. Also, we attempted to globally define the target sites of Asg1p in vivo on a genome-wide scale by combining Chromatin Immuno Precipitation with microarrays (ChIP-chip). We identified eight putative Asg1p target genes: YRO2, HSP78, ZRT2, ZRT1, MSN4, STP4, TPO2, and HSP30.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.112617 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Drolet, Jessica Ann. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Microbiology and Immunology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002698663, proquestno: AAIMR51262, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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