University of Massachusetts Medical School Faculty Publications
UMMS Affiliation
Program in Molecular Medicine; Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
Publication Date
2021-03-03
Document Type
Article Preprint
Disciplines
Biochemistry | Biophysics | Fungi | Molecular Biology
Abstract
It is increasingly appreciated that intracellular pH changes are important biological signals. This motivates the elucidation of molecular mechanisms of pH-sensing. We determined that a nucleocytoplasmic pH oscillation was required for the transcriptional response to carbon starvation in S. cerevisiae. The SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complex is a key mediator of this transcriptional response. We found that a glutamine-rich low complexity sequence (QLC) in the SNF5 subunit of this complex, and histidines within this sequence, were required for efficient transcriptional reprogramming during carbon starvation. Furthermore, the SNF5 QLC mediated pH-dependent recruitment of SWI/SNF to a model promoter in vitro. Simulations showed that protonation of histidines within the SNF5 QLC lead to conformational expansion, providing a potential biophysical mechanism for regulation of these interactions. Together, our results indicate that that pH changes are a second messenger for transcriptional reprogramming during carbon starvation, and that the SNF5 QLC acts as a pH-sensor.
Keywords
Molecular Biology, carbon starvation, intracellular pH changes, histidines, Genes and Chromosomes, Biochemistry, Biophysics
Rights and Permissions
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license
DOI of Published Version
10.1101/2021.03.03.433592
Source
bioRxiv 2021.03.03.433592; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.03.433592. Link to preprint on bioRxiv
Journal/Book/Conference Title
bioRxiv
Repository Citation
Gutiérrez JI, Brittingham GP, Karadeniz Y, Tran KD, Dutta A, Holehouse AS, Peterson CL, Holt LJ. (2021). SWI/SNF senses carbon starvation with a pH-sensitive low complexity sequence [preprint]. University of Massachusetts Medical School Faculty Publications. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.03.433592. Retrieved from https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/faculty_pubs/1927
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Comments
This article is a preprint. Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been certified by peer review.