Yeast cells are exposed to a wide variety of environment stresses, among them changes in the osmotic conditions. An osmolar upshift leads to fast loose of intracellular water, so living cells have developed mechanisms to counteract this lost. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae changes in the osmotic conditions are sensed by the HOG pathway. The HOG pathway is a MAPK signalling pathway and the functional homolog of the stress activated MAPK JNK MAPK and p38 present in mammals. Because there is a high degree of conservation of these cascades, the HOG pathway is a good model to study osmotic adaptation processes.
Recent reports have shown that the Hog1 MAPK can regulate several processes such as cell cycle control, metabolic adaptation or regulation of gene expression.
At the beginning of this work, the mechanisms by which the Hog1 MAPK was controlling gene expression were unclear because transcription factors under the control of the MAPK were not well characterized. Our goal was the identification of new transcription factors under the control of the MAPK. Therefore, we designed a genetic screen and selected clones from a multicopy genomic library that were able to induce the expression of Hog1 dependent genes in non stress conditions. One of these clones was the SMP1 gene. Smp1 encodes for a MEF2-like transcription factor. Its overexpression induced the expression of osmoresponsive genes such as STL1, whereas smp1 cells were defective in their expression. smp1 cells showed reduced viability upon osmotic shock. Smp1-Hog1 interaction was checked by coprecipitation. Moreover, Smp1 was phosphorylated upon osmotic stress in a Hog1-dependent manner and in vitro phosphorylation experiments showed that Hog1 phosphorylated Smp1 at the C-terminal region. This phosphorylation was important for Smp1 osmoadaptation functions.
Moreover Hog1 was implicated in cell adaptability to stationary phase through Smp1.
On the other hand, microarrays studies showed that HXT1 hexose transporter was upregulated upon an osmotic shock in a Hog1 dependent manner. Expression of the HXT1 gene, which encodes a low affinity glucose transporter in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is induced in response to glucose by the general glucose induction pathway, involving the Snf3/Rgt2 membrane glucose sensors, the SCF-Grr1 ubiquitination complex and the Rgt1 transcription factor. In addition to the glucose signalling pathway, we have found that, regulation of HXT1 expression also requires the HOG pathway. Deletion of components on both pathways results in impaired HXT1 expression. Genetic analyses identified Sko1 as the transcription factor under the control of Hog1 that was modulating HXT1 expression.
Our studies here have shown that both Smp1 and Sko1 are transcription factors under the control of the MAPK.