Studies of Cell Cycle-regulated Transcriptional Programs in Fission Yeast

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Mol. Biol. Cell 16:1026-1042.

Identification of Cell Cycle-regulated Genes in Fission Yeast.

Peng X1†, Murthy Karuturi RK1†, Miller LD1, Lin K1, Jia Y1, Kondu P3, Wang L1, Wong LS2, Liu ET1, Balasubramanian MK4,5, Liu J1,6*.

1Genome Institute of Singapore, Singapore 138672, Singapore; 2Bioinformatics Institute, Singapore 138671, Singapore; 3Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore 119613, Singapore; 4Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, Singapore 117604, Singapore; Department of Biological Science5 and Biochemistry6, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117597, Singapore.

Cell cycle progression is both regulated and accompanied by periodic changes in the expression levels of a large number of genes. To investigate cell cycle-regulated transcriptional programs in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, we developed a whole-genome oligonucleotide-based DNA microarray. Microarray analysis of both wild-type and cdc25 mutant cell cultures was performed to identify transcripts whose levels oscillated during the cell cycle. Using an unsupervised algorithm, we identified 747 genes that met the criteria for cell cycle-regulated expression. Peaks of gene expression were found to be distributed throughout the entire cell cycle. Furthermore, we found that four promoter motifs exhibited strong association with cell-cycle-phase-specific expression. Examination of the regulation of MCB motif-containing genes through the perturbation of DSC/MBF-mediated transcription in arrested synchronous cdc10 mutant cell cultures revealed a subset of functional targets of the DSC/MBF transcription factor complex, as well as certain gene promoter requirements. Finally, we compared our data with those for the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and found approximately 140 genes that are cell cycle-regulated in both yeasts, suggesting that these genes may play an evolutionarily conserved role in regulation of cell cycle-specific processes.

†Co-first authors; *Corresponding author

 

  1. Strains used in this study.

  2. Preparation of synchronous cultures.

  3. Microarray related technologies.

  4. Algorithms used in this study. (under construction)

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  6. Download microarray datasets.