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On metabolic and phenotypic diversity in yeast

Kamrad, Stephan; (2021) On metabolic and phenotypic diversity in yeast. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London). Green open access

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Abstract

This thesis explores metabolic and phenotypic diversity in the two model yeasts Schizosaccharomyces pombe and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Colony screens are a classical and powerful technique for investigating these topics, but there is a lack of modern, scalable bioinformatics tools. To address this need, I have developed pyphe which greatly facilitates colony screen data acquisition and statistical analysis. I explore optimal experimental designs, especially regarding the usefulness of timecourse imaging and colony viability analysis. Pyphe is used in a functional genomics screen, aiming to find functions for a set of largely uncharacterised lincRNAs. We identify hundreds of new lincRNA-associated phenotypes across numerous conditions and compare lincRNA phenotype profiles to those of codinggene mutants. Next, I have used pyphe to investigate the respiration/fermentation balance of wild S. pombe isolates. Contrary to the expectation that glucose completely represses respiration in this Crabtree-positive species, I find that strains generally strike a balance and that individual strains differ significantly in their residual respiration activity. This is associated with an unusual miss-sense variant in S. pombe’s sole pyruvate kinase gene. Its impact is dissected in detail, revealing a change in flux through pyruvate kinase and associated changes in gene expression, metabolism, growth and stress resistance. Finally, I explore how extracellular amino acids interact with cellular metabolism, with the aim of answering the important question whether or not clonal yeast cultures segregate into heterogeneous producer/consumer populations that exchange amino acids. I develop a novel proteomics-based method that characterises amino acid labelling patterns in peptides. I find that the supplementation of some, but not all amino acids completely suppresses selfsynthesis. However, I find no evidence for heterogeneous responses of our laboratory S. cerevisiae strain, but the functionality of the method is demonstrated clearly. Overall, this work represents several advancements to our understanding of yeast metabolism and physiology, as well as new experimental and computational methods.

Type: Thesis (Doctoral)
Qualification: Ph.D
Title: On metabolic and phenotypic diversity in yeast
Event: UCL (University College London)
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © The Author 2021. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request.
Keywords: Microbiology, Systems Biology, Yeast, High-throughput screening, Heterogeneity
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10130653
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