Candida Infection Biology – fungal armoury, battlefields ... - FINSysB

Transcriptional rewiring of fungal ribosomal gene
M. Whiteway, H. Lavoie, H. Hogues
NRC-BRI 6100 Royalmount Ave, Montreal, and McGill Biology, 1205 Penfield, Montreal
Examination of transcriptional regulatory circuits in fungi have uncovered many
examples of what is termed rewiring - transcription factors dedicated to controlling
a particular regulon in one species are found to control distinct regulons in other
species. A dramatic example of this phenomenon has been observed for the control
of the expression of the genes encoding the proteins that make up the ribosome.
The Tbf1 and Cbf1 proteins are key regulators of ribosomal gene expression in
C. albicans, but these proteins have been replaced in ribosomal control in the
S. cerevisiae lineage by Rap1p, and serve in yeast as telomere binding and
centromere binding proteins respectively. We can trace the evolutionary progression
of this process and speculate on mechanisms driving this exchange of controlling
elements.
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