Affiliations: Division of Cell Biology and Biophysics, University of Missouri-Kansas City, 5007 Rockhill Rd, Kansas City MO 64110, USA.
Keywords:
pseudohyphal growth, sporulation, meiosis, quiescence, Boolean logic, cell-cell signals, yeast communities.
Corresponding Author(s):
Saul M. Honigberg, honigbergs@umkc.edu
Conflict of interest statement:
I declare no conflict of interest with the content of my article entitled “Similar environments but diverse fates: Responses of budding yeast to nutrient deprivation”.
Please cite this article as:
Saul M. Honigberg (2016). Similar environments but diverse fates: Responses of budding yeast to nutrient deprivation. Microbial Cell 3(8): 302-328. doi: 10.15698/mic2016.08.516
© 2016 Honigberg. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.
Similar environments but diverse fates: Responses of budding yeast to nutrient deprivation.
Authors:Saul M. Honigberg
doi: 10.15698/mic2016.08.516
Volume 3, pp. 302 to 328, published 01/08/2016.
Division of Cell Biology and Biophysics, University of Missouri-Kansas City, 5007 Rockhill Rd, Kansas City MO 64110, USA.
Keywords:
pseudohyphal growth, sporulation, meiosis, quiescence, Boolean logic, cell-cell signals, yeast communities.
Corresponding Author(s):
Conflict of interest statement:
I declare no conflict of interest with the content of my article entitled “Similar environments but diverse fates: Responses of budding yeast to nutrient deprivation”.
Please cite this article as:
Saul M. Honigberg (2016). Similar environments but diverse fates: Responses of budding yeast to nutrient deprivation. Microbial Cell 3(8): 302-328. doi: 10.15698/mic2016.08.516
© 2016 Honigberg. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.
Abstract:
Diploid budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) can adopt one of several alternative differentiation fates in response to nutrient limitation, and each of these fates provides distinct biological functions. When different strain backgrounds are taken into account, these various fates occur in response to similar environmental cues, are regulated by the same signal transduction pathways, and share many of the same master regulators. I propose that the relationships between fate choice, environmental cues and signaling pathways are not Boolean, but involve graded levels of signals, pathway activation and master-regulator activity. In the absence of large differences between environmental cues, small differences in the concentration of cues may be reinforced by cell-to-cell signals. These signals are particularly essential for fate determination within communities, such as colonies and biofilms, where fate choice varies dramatically from one region of the community to another. The lack of Boolean relationships between cues, signaling pathways, master regulators and cell fates may allow yeast communities to respond appropriately to the wide range of environments they encounter in nature.