The yeast and fungal prions determine heritable and infectious traits, and are thus genes composed of protein. Most prions are inactive forms of a normal protein as it forms a self-propagating filamentous β – sheet - rich polymer structure called amyloid. Remarkably, a single prion protein sequence can form two or more faithfully inherited prion variants, in effect alleles of these genes. What protein structure explains this protein-based inheritance? Using solid-state NMR, we showed that the infectious amyloids of the prion domains of Ure2p, Sup35p and Rnq1p have an in-register parallel architecture. This structure explains how the amyloid filament ends can template the structure of a new protein as it joins the filament. The yeast prions [PSI+] and [URE3] are not found in wild strains, indicating they are a disadvantage to the cell. Moreover, the prion domains of Ure2p and Sup35p have functions unrelated to prion formation, indicating that these domains are not present for the purpose of forming prions. Indeed, prion forming ability is not conserved, even within S. cerevisiae, suggesting that the rare formation of prions is a disease. The prion domain sequences generally vary more rapidly in evolution than does the remainder of the molecule, producing a barrier to prion transmission, perhaps selected in evolution by this protection.
Sup35p of Saccharomyces cerevisiae can form the [PSI+] prion, an infectious amyloid in which the protein is largely inactive. The part of Sup35p that forms the amyloid is the region normally involved in control of mRNA turnover. The formation of [PSI+] by Sup35p's from other yeasts has been interpreted to imply that the prion-forming ability of Sup35p is conserved in evolution, and thus of survival/fitness/evolutionary value to these organisms. We surveyed a larger number of yeast and fungal species by the same criteria as used previously and find that the Sup35p from many species cannot form prions. [PSI+] could be formed by the Sup35p from Candida albicans, Candida maltosa, Debaromyces hansenii, and Kluyveromyces lactis, but orders of magnitude less often than the S. cerevisiae Sup35p converts to the prion form. The Sup35s from Schizosaccharomyces pombe and Ashbya gossypii clearly do not form [PSI+]. We were also unable to detect [PSI+] formation by the Sup35ps from Aspergillus nidulans, Aspergillus fumigatus, Magnaporthe grisea, Ustilago maydis, or Cryptococcus neoformans. Each of two C. albicans SUP35 alleles can form [PSI+], but transmission from one to the other is partially blocked. These results suggest that the prion-forming ability of Sup35p is not a conserved trait, but is an occasional deleterious side effect of a protein domain conserved for another function. P RIONS are infectious proteins, proteins that are altered in such a way that they can instruct the unaltered form of the same protein to undergo the same alteration. Vertical or horizontal transmission of the altered form to a new individual restarts the process of converting the unaltered form to the altered form. If the presence of the altered form has some toxic or other effect, or if the absence of the unaltered form is detectable, then a phenotype or disease is produced (reviewed in Liebman and Chernoff 2012;Wickner et al. 2013). Most prions are an amyloid form of a normally nonamyloid protein.Amyloid is a linear polymer of a single-protein species, composed largely of b-sheets, with the b-strands perpendicular to the long axis of the filaments.In yeast, as in other organisms, infection means horizontal transmission to a neighboring cell, not necessarily related to the cell that is the source of the infection. Perhaps because of yeast's tough cell wall, neither the RNA viruses of yeast nor yeast prions leave one cell to travel through the medium and enter another cell. Rather, they are passed from cell to cell by mating and were first found as nonchromosomal genetic elements. This horizontal spread (infection) is conveniently shown by cytoduction (cytoplasmic mixing), in which two cells mate, but do not fuse their nuclei, which separate in the subsequent cell division. However, the resulting daughter cells with the parental nuclei each have mixed cytoplasms. If one parent strain carried a prion and the other not, both daughter cells will be found to carry it. A self-propagating amyloid that is not passed from cell to cell by t...
<p>PDF File - 501K, PF02341066 is well tolerated in female athymic nude mice.</p>
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