Mpt5p, a stress tolerance- and lifespan-promoting PUF protein in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, acts upstream of the cell wall integrity pathway.
Pumilio family (PUF) proteins affect specific genes by binding to, and inhibiting the translation or stability of, their transcripts. The PUF domain is required and sufficient for this function. One Saccharomyces cerevisiae PUF protein, Mpt5p (also called Puf5p or Uth4p), promotes stress tolerance and replicative life span (the maximum number of doublings a mother cell can undergo before entering into senescence) by an unknown mechanism thought to partly overlap with, but to be independent of, the cell wall integrity (CWI) pathway. Here, we found that mpt5Delta mutants also display a short chronological life span (the time cells stay alive in saturated cultures in synthetic medium), a defect that is suppressed by activation of CWI signaling. We found that Mpt5p is an upstream activator of the CWI pathway: mpt5Delta mutants display the appropriate phenotypes and genetic interactions, display low basal activity of the pathway, and are defective in activation of the pathway upon thermal stress. A set of mRNAs that specifically bind to Mpt5p was recently reported. One such putative target, LRG1, encodes a GTPase-activating protein for Rho1p that directly links Mpt5p to CWI signaling: Lrg1p inhibits CWI signaling, LRG1 mRNA contains a consensus Mpt5p-binding site in its putative 3' untranslated region, loss of Lrg1p suppresses the temperature sensitivity and CWI signaling defects of mpt5Delta mutants, and LRG1 mRNA abundance is inhibited by Mpt5p. We conclude that Mpt5p is required for normal replicative and chronological life spans and that the CWI pathway is a key and direct downstream target of this PUF protein.
Stewart
Mark S
MS
Division of Molecular Genetics, Faculty of Biomedical and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Anderson College Complex, 56 Dumbarton Road, Glasgow G11 6NU, United Kingdom.
Krause
Sue Ann
SA
McGhie
Josephine
J
Gray
Joseph V
JV
D000222:Adaptation, Physiological; D018797:Cell Cycle Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D002470:Cell Survival; D002473:Cell Wall / Q000378:metabolism*; D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D020690:GTPase-Activating Proteins; D015966:Gene Expression Regulation, Fungal; D008136:Longevity / Q000502:physiology*; D016601:RNA-Binding Proteins; D012097:Repressor Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000235:genetics / Q000254:growth & development / Q000378:metabolism*; D029701:Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D015398:Signal Transduction
D018797:Cell Cycle Proteins; D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins; D020690:GTPase-Activating Proteins; C088938:LRG1 protein, S cerevisiae; C449502:MPT5 protein, S cerevisiae; D016601:RNA-Binding Proteins; D012097:Repressor Proteins; D029701:Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins