Mitochondrial protein import under kinase surveillance
Authors:Magdalena Opalińska1 and Chris Meisinger1,2
doi: 10.15698/mic2014.01.127
Volume 1, pp. 51 to 57, published 29/01/2014.
1 Institut für Biochemie und Molekularbiologie, ZBMZ.
2 BIOSS Centre for Biological Signalling Studies.
Keywords:
Mitochondria, organellar biogenesis, preprotein, TOM complex, Casein kinase (CK1), (CK2), Protein kinase A (PKA).
Corresponding Author(s):
Conflict of interest statement:
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Please cite this article as:
Magdalena Opalińska and Chris Meisinger (2014). Mitochondrial protein import under kinase surveillance. Microbial Cell 1(2): 51-57.
© 2014 Opalińska et al. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivative 3.0 license, which allows readers to download the article and share it with others, provided that the original authors and source are acknowledged. The article cannot be changed in any way or used commercially.
Abstract:
Despite the simplicity of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, its basic cellular machinery tremendously mirrors that of higher eukaryotic counterparts. Thus, this unicellular organism turned out to be an invaluable model system to study the countless mechanisms that govern life of the cell. Recently, it has also enabled the deciphering of signalling pathways that control flux of mitochondrial proteins to the organelle according to metabolic requirements. For decades mitochondria were considered autonomous organelles that are only partially incorporated into cellular signalling networks. Consequently, only little has been known about the role of reversible phosphorylation as a meaningful mechanism that orchestrates mitochondrial biology accordingly to cellular needs. Therefore, research in this direction has been vastly neglected. However, findings over the past few years have changed this view and new exciting fields in mitochondrial biology have emerged. Here, we summarize recent discoveries in the yeast model system that point towards a vital role of reversible phosphorylation in regulation of mitochondrial protein import.