Ato1

Membrane transporters are important targets in metabolic engineering to establish and improve the production of chemicals such as succinic acid from renewable resources by microbial cell factories. We recently provided a Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain able to strongly overproduce succinic acid from glycerol and CO2 in which the Dct-02 transporter from Aspergillus niger , assumed to be an anion channel, was used to export succinic acid from the cells. In a different study, we reported a new group of succinic acid transporters from the AceTr family, which were also described as anion channels...

Background: Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are a novel bioelectrochemical devices that can use exoelectrogens as biocatalyst to convert various organic wastes into electricity. Among them, acetate, a major component of industrial biological wastewater and by-product of lignocellulose degradation, could release eight electrons per mole when completely degraded into CO2 and H2 O, which has been identified as a promising carbon source and electron donor. However, Shewanella oneidensis MR-1, a famous facultative anaerobic exoelectrogens, only preferentially uses lactate as carbon source and electron donor and could hardly metabolize acetate in MFCs, which greatly limited Coulombic efficiency of MFCs and the capacity of bio-catalysis...

Aiming at improving the transport of biotechnologically relevant carboxylic acids in engineered microbial cell factories, the focus of this work was to study plasma membrane transporters belonging to the Acetate Uptake Transporter (AceTr) family. Ato1 and SatP, members of this family from Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Escherichia coli, respectively, are the main acetate transporters in these species. The analysis of conserved amino acid residues within AceTr family members combined with the study of Ato1 3D model based on SatP, was the rationale for selection of site-directed mutagenesis targets...

Mitochondrial retrograde signaling mediates communication from altered mitochondria to the nucleus and is involved in many normal and pathophysiological changes, including cell metabolic reprogramming linked to cancer development and progression in mammals. The major mitochondrial retrograde pathway described in yeast includes three activators, Rtg1p, Rtg2p and Rtg3p, and repressors, Mks1p and Bmh1p/Bmh2p. Using differentiated yeast colonies, we show that Mks1p-Rtg pathway regulation is complex and includes three branches that divergently regulate the properties and fate of three specifically localized cell subpopulations via signals from differently altered mitochondria...

Candida albicans is an opportunistic human fungal pathogen that causes a variety of diseases, ranging from superficial mucosal to life-threatening systemic infections, the latter particularly in patients with defects in innate immune function. C. albicans cells phagocytosed by macrophages undergo a dramatic change in their metabolism in which amino acids are a key nutrient. We have shown that amino acid catabolism allows the cell to neutralize the phagolysosome and initiate hyphal growth. We show here that members of the 10-gene ATO family, which are induced by phagocytosis or the presence of amino acids in an Stp2-dependent manner and encode putative acetate or ammonia transporters, are important effectors of this pH change in vitro and in macrophages...

The Gpr1 protein of the ascomycetous yeast Yarrowia lipolytica belongs to the poorly characterized Gpr1/Fun34/YaaH protein family, members of which have thus far only been found in prokaryotes and lower eukaryotes. Trans-dominant mutations in the GPR1 gene result in acetic acid sensitivity of cells at low pH. Moreover, Gpr1p is subjected to phosphorylation at serine-37 in a carbon source-dependent manner. Here we show that several mutations within the ORFs of the GPR1 orthologues of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, YCR010c (ATO1) and YNR002c (ATO2), also trans-dominantly induce acetic acid hypersensitivity in this yeast...

Under iron deprivation Omphalotus olearius was found to produce the hydroxamate siderophore ferrichrome A. A gene cluster consisting of three genes: fso1, a nonribosomal peptide synthetase whose expression is enhanced in the absence of iron; omo1, a l-ornithine-N(5)-monooxygenase; and ato1, an acyltransferase probably involved in the transfer of the methylglutaconyl residue to N(5)-hydroxyorinithine was identified. The fso1 sequence is interrupted by 48 introns and its derived protein sequence has a similar structure to the homologous genes of Ustilago maydis and Aspergillus nidulans...

The regular organization of the ommatidial lattice in the Drosophila eye originates in the precise regulation of the proneural gene atonal (ato), which is responsible for the specification of the ommatidial founder cells R8. Here we show that Rough eye (Roi), a dominant mutation manifested by severe roughening of the adult eye surface, causes defects in ommatidial assembly and ommatidial spacing. The ommatidial spacing defect can be ascribed to the irregular distribution of R8 cells caused by a disruption of the patterning of ato expression...

Neuropeptide function in the peripheral and central nervous systems has been described in mammals as well as in insects. We previously reported the cloning of the neuropeptide receptor NKD, a Drosophila melanogaster homologue of the mammalian tachykinin receptors. This receptor is expressed during Drosophila embryonic development and in the adult fly. Use of the NKD promoter region to drive beta-galactosidase expression in transgenic flies reveals a bipartite promoter organisation: the distal region controls NKD expression in neurosecretory cells of the central nervous system during late embryogenesis, whereas the proximal region is responsible for transient expression in peripheral nervous system during late embryogenesis, whereas the proximal region is responsible for transient expression in peripheral nervous system precursor cells early in development...