Summer Research
* Student(s): Jamil Abbasy , Alissa Barbato , Flora Salazar
Advisor: Jinnie Garrett
Title: Regulation of Amino Acid Permease Gene Expression in Yeast
Abstract:
Permease proteins are necessary for nutrient transport in all living organisms. The yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, has about 20 permeases involved in the uptake of amino acids into the cell. Wild-type yeast strains readily grow on rich YPD media. They exhibit the expected permease promoter induction and repression. Mutant forms of parent strains have been isolated that are not able to grow on rich media and instead grow only on minimal amino acid media. We used gene expression vectors containing the promoter regions of 4 amino acid permease genes (GAP1, AGP1, AGP2 and AGP3) linked to the gene for the enzyme β-galactosidase (lacz). These vecotrs were transformed into wild-type and mutant yeast and the level of permease gene expression determined in each case. The three parent yeast strains used were 2102, SP1, and YP-52 and each mutant form, 1001, R2V, and 1510-8 respectively.
Jamil Abbasy and Alissa Barbato were supported on a NIH-AREA grant "Yeast Amino Acid Permeases". Flor Salazar was supported by a research assistantship from the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation.