Interaction between yeast mitochondrial and nuclear genomes: Null alleles of RTG genes affect resistance to the alkaloid lycorine in rho° petites of Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Some nuclear genes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (S. cerevisiae) respond to signals from the mitochondria in a process called by Butow (Cell Death Differ. 9 (2002) 1043 - 1045) retrograde regulation. Expression of these genes is activated in cells lacking mitochondrial function by involvement of RTG1, RTG2 and RTG3 genes whose protein products bind to "R-boxes" in the promoter region; RTG2p is a cytoplasmic protein. Since S. cerevisiae rho(0) strains, lacking the entire mitochondrial genome, are resistant to lycorine, an alkaloid extracted from Amaryllis plants, it could be hypothesized that in rho(0) cells the dysfunctional mitochondrial status stimulates overexpression of nuclear genes very likely involved in both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA replication. In this report we show that the resistance of rho(0) cells to lycorine is affected by the deletion of RTG genes. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.