A novel system to monitor mitochondrial translation in yeast

The mitochondrial genome is responsible for the production of a handful of polypeptides that are core subunits of the membrane-bound oxidative phosphorylation system. Until now the mechanistic studies of mitochondrial protein synthesis inside cells have been conducted with inhibition of cytoplasmic protein synthesis to reduce the background of nuclear gene expression with the undesired consequence of major disturbances of cellular signaling cascades. Here we have generated a system that allows direct monitoring of mitochondrial translation in unperturbed cells. A recoded gene for superfolder GFP was inserted into the yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) mitochondrial genome and enabled the detection of translation through fluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry in functional mitochondria. This novel tool allows the investigation of the function and regulation of mitochondrial translation during stress signaling, aging and mitochondrial biogenesis.


INTRODUCTION
In Saccharomyces cerevisiae the mitochondrial genome encodes eight proteins of which seven are membrane proteins and core subunits of the oxidative phosphorylation system (OXPHOS) [1]. Respiratory activity, therefore, depends on mitochondrial translation, but the molecular mechanisms, regulation and timing of mitochondrial translation are largely unexplored [2]. A major obstacle when analyzing mitochondrial translation in cells is the need to inhibit cytosolic translation in order to follow incorporation of radiolabeled amino acids into mitochondrial translation products [3]. Such pharmacological inhibition impacts severely on cellular homeostasis and alters signaling cascades. For example, inhibition of cytosolic translation using cycloheximide leads to an increase in free amino acid levels, which in turn activates TOR signaling [4][5][6] and thus affects cell growth, nutrient signaling and life span [7][8][9]. Additionally, cycloheximide treatment alters protein degradation [10] and acutely impacts on mitochondrial translation within very short time frames [11]. To directly monitor mito-chondrial protein synthesis without interfering with cellular protein homeostasis new experimental tools are needed.
Employing biolistic transformation we have integrated a gene encoding superfolder GFP into the mitochondrial genome. This reporter is compatible with mitochondrial respiratory function and enables the direct detection of mitochondrial translation in vivo as GFP fluorescence. This novel tool will facilitate future studies on the regulation and timing of mitochondrial translation.

Integration of a superfolder GFP gene into the mitochondrial genome
In a pioneering previous study, a gene encoding fluorescence-enhanced GFP was inserted into the mitochondrial genome to replace the open reading frame of COX3 [12]. The resulting strain was respiration deficient and expressed only weak fluorescence, which limited its usefulness in fluorescence microscopic and flow cytometric experiments. This limitation could be explained by poor folding of GFP expressed in the context of the mitochondrial OPEN ACCESS | www.microbialcell.com translation system [13], which is specialized on the production of membrane proteins. To circumvent the folding problem, we employed superfolder GFP (sfGFP), which folds with enhanced kinetics resulting in a more stable protein [14]. To allow translation of the mRNA by mitochondrial ribosomes its coding sequence was flanked by the authentic 5' and 3' untranslated regions (UTR) of COX2 [15][16][17][18], coding for the cytochrome oxidase subunit Cox2. To avoid the respiratory deficiency associated with inactivation of mitochondrial genes, we engineered a new mitochondrial genome that coded for sfGFP as an additional ninth open reading frame. The final engineered gene was termed sfGFP m and was cloned into the pPT24* plasmid (Fig 1A-B), yielding a plasmid (pPT24*-sfGFP m ) that contained COX2 5'UTR-sfGFP m -COX2 3'UTR as well as the authentic COX2, including its upstream sequences ( Fig 1B). pPT24*-sfGFP m was delivered into a strain that lacks mtDNA (rho 0 ) using biolistic transformation [19]. After selection, the resulting strain that carried pPT24*-sfGFP m was used to cytoduce strain cox2-62, which lacks a functional COX2 gene, to gain respiratory competence by homologous recombination of the two mitochondrial genomes [20]. Finally, we transferred the novel mitochondrial genome into the strain W303 resulting in the strain sfGFP m . Western blot analysis demonstrated that this engineered genome expressed readily detectable levels of sfGFP m (Fig 1C).

Expression of mitochondrially encoded sfGFP m does not disturb mitochondrial function
We assessed the impact of sfGFP m expression on mitochondrial function by monitoring respiratory growth on non-fermentable medium and found that it was similar between wild type and the sfGFP m strain (Fig 2A and 2B). As predicted, steady state levels of respiratory chain subu-nits were unchanged and showed the expected increase when cells were grown in non-fermentable compared to fermentable medium ( Fig 2C). Finally, we checked for respiratory chain assembly into supercomplexes as well as cytochrome oxidase activity and found that both were unchanged compared to wild type ( Fig 2D). We therefore conclude that expression of sfGFP m does not alter the assembly of respiratory complexes or the general respiratory competence of the cells.

Expression of sfGFP m followed by flow cytometry
We next explored the possibility to use sfGFP m as an optical readout for mitochondrial translation. First we checked the steady-state levels of sfGFP m by Western blotting during respiration and fermentation to verify that mitochondrially encoded sfGFP follows the same expression pattern as other mitochondrially encoded proteins. As expected sfGFP m protein levels increased in the presence of galactose and glycerol after 6 and 8 hours in the same way as Cox2 levels (Fig 3A-B). Next we determined GFP fluorescence by flow cytometry under the same conditions and observed an increase in the fluorescent signal when cells were grown for 6, 8 and 10 hours in galactose or glycerol containing medium (Fig 3C-D). To control for mitochondrial biogenesis we used mCherry-tagged Cit1, a nuclear encoded protein that is imported into mitochondria from the cytosol [21]. Similar to sfGFP m , Cit1-mCherry levels also increased when grown in the presence of galactose or glycerol, indicating a general increase in mitochondrial biogenesis induced by galactose and glycerol (Fig 3C-D). In sum, these results confirm that sfGFP m represents a functional reporter for the analysis of mitochondrial translation in vivo without the need to inhibit cytosolic translation. Flow cytometry as quantitative readout opens up many

sfGFP m allows detection of changes in mitochondrial gene expression
We determined the stability of sfGFP m by inhibiting mitochondrial translation using chloramphenicol (CAP). Using immunoblotting coupled with detection by near-infrared fluorescence, we found that sfGFP m levels declined over four hours after treatment with CAP ( Fig 4A). Accordingly, flow cytometry confirmed that already two hours after block of mitochondrial translation via CAP, a decrease in GFP intensity was detectable. While this loss of sfGFP m signal became even more evident over time (Fig 4B), the nuclear encoded mitochondrial protein Cit1-mCherry was stable ( Fig 4B). To further test the reporter construct, we made use of glucose repression of mitochondrial function [22][23][24]. When adding glucose to non-fermentable medium, mitochondrial biogenesis as well as translation and OXPHOS assembly are repressed. During glucose repression, we observed a pronounced decline in sfGFP m levels by Western blotting and flow cytometric evaluation. As expected, Cit1-mCherry levels were also decreased by glucose-induced repression of mitochondrial biogenesis ( Fig  4C-D). Taken together, both western blot analysis and flow cytometric evaluation of sfGFP m faithfully report the specific inhibition of mitochondrial translation by CAP as well as the general down regulation of mitochondrial biogenesis during glucose repression.

sfGFP m visualized by fluorescence microscopy
Finally, we visualized sfGFP m via fluorescence microscopy. Cells grown in non-fermentable medium in exponential phase showed mitochondrially localized GFP fluorescence (Fig 5), as evidenced by co-localization with Cit1-mCherry (Supplemental movie). This opens the possibility to employ sfGFP m not only as a reporter for mitochondrial translation but also to follow mitochondrial movement during cell division, mitophagy, or mitochondrial biogenesis.
In conclusion, we have established a functionally neutral mitochondrially encoded GFP reporter, termed sfGFP m , which is easily monitored via Western blotting, flow cytometry and microscopy. Our reporter allows studying mitochondrial translation in vivo without poising cytoplasmic translation and therefore enables detailed studies of mitochondrial function without perturbing cell physiology. The versatile nature of the new mitochondrial genome described here opens up new venues for the investigation of mitochondrial gene expression by optical methods in respiring cells.

Fluorescence microscopy
Cells were grown at 30°C and live images were taken using a Zeiss LSM 800 Airyscan microscope (Carl Zeiss, Jena, Germany) with a Plan-apochromatic 63X/1.4-numerical aperture oil immersion lens. For confocal excitation of GFP, a 488-nm diode laser was set at 10.0%, and emission was detected between wavelengths 492 and 540 nm. For excitation of mCherry, a 561-nm laser line was used at 2.8%, and emission was detected between 565 and 695 nm. A Z-stack of cells was performed using ZEN blue 2.1 software and maximum intensity projections of the images are shown. Image analysis was done by using ImageJ (National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD) and Imaris 8.4 software.  Cells from an overnight culture in YPD were grown to exponential phase for six hours in glycerol. Cells were treated with 2 mg/ml chloramphenicol (CAP) or vehicle control (VC) for the indicated times and whole cell extracts were separated on SDS-PAGE and analyzed with Western Blotting using the indicated antibodies. The fluorescence signals of 6 independent experiments were quantified and the GFP signals were normalized to the tubulin signals. Data is depicted as fold of the respective untreated time point and the mean +/-SEM is displayed. (B) As in (A) but cells were analyzed using flow cytometry. Signals of sfGFP m and Cit1-mCherry were quantified from eight independent samples, and the fluorescence intensity recorded for a strain lacking any fluorescent tag was subtracted as background before signals from treated cells were normalized to control values. Numbers indicate significance values from student t-test. (C) Cells were grown as in A, but exposed to glucose. (D) As in (B) but cells were exposed to glucose. Numbers indicate significance values from student t-test.
OPEN ACCESS | www.microbialcell.com potassium phosphate; 0.9% NaCl; adjusted to pH 7.2). For quantification of fluorescence intensities using flow cytometry (BD LSR Fortessa), 30,000 cells were recorded and analyzed with the BD FACSDiva software. A W303a strain carrying no fluorescent tag served as background, and respective fluorescence intensities on either YPD, YPGal or YPGly were subtracted as background.

Statistics
Statistical significance was determined using student's t-test (unpaired, two-tailed, equal variance).
13. Demlow CM, Fox TD (2003). Activity of mitochondrially synthesized reporter proteins is lower than that of imported proteins and is increased by lowering cAMP in glucose-grown Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells.  OPEN ACCESS | www.microbialcell.com