Faculty Collaboration Database

The freeze-thaw stress response of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is growth phase specific and is controlled by nutritional state via the RAS-cyclic AMP signal transduction pathway. Appl Environ Microbiol 1997 Oct;63(10):3818-24

Date

11/05/1997

Pubmed ID

9327544

Pubmed Central ID

PMC168690

DOI

10.1128/aem.63.10.3818-3824.1997

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-0030793730 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   113 Citations

Abstract

The ability of cells to survive freezing and thawing is expected to depend on the physiological conditions experienced prior to freezing. We examined factors affecting yeast cell survival during freeze-thaw stress, including those associated with growth phase, requirement for mitochondrial functions, and prior stress treatment(s), and the role played by relevant signal transduction pathways. The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae was frozen at -20 degrees C for 2 h (cooling rate, less than 4 degrees C min-1) and thawed on ice for 40 min. Supercooling occurred without reducing cell survival and was followed by freezing. Loss of viability was proportional to the freezing duration, indicating that freezing is the main determinant of freeze-thaw damage. Regardless of the carbon source used, the wild-type strain and an isogenic petite mutant ([rho 0]) showed the same pattern of freeze-thaw tolerance throughout growth, i.e., high resistance during lag phase and low resistance during log phase, indicating that the response to freeze-thaw stress is growth phase specific and not controlled by glucose repression. In addition, respiratory ability and functional mitochondria are necessary to confer full resistance to freeze-thaw stress. Both nitrogen and carbon source starvation led to freeze-thaw tolerance. The use of strains affected in the RAS-cyclic AMP (RAS-cAMP) pathway or supplementation of an rca1 mutant (defective in the cAMP phosphodiesterase gene) with cAMP showed that the freeze-thaw response of yeast is under the control of the RAS-cAMP pathway. Yeast did not adapt to freeze-thaw stress following repeated freeze-thaw treatment with or without a recovery period between freeze-thaw cycles, nor could it adapt following pretreatment by cold shock. However, freeze-thaw tolerance of yeast cells was induced during fermentative and respiratory growth by pretreatment with H2O2, cycloheximide, mild heat shock, or NaCl, indicating that cross protection between freeze-thaw stress and a limited number of other types of stress exists.

Author List

Park JI, Grant CM, Attfield PV, Dawes IW

Author

Jong-In Park PhD Professor in the Biochemistry department at Medical College of Wisconsin

MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Adaptation, Physiological
Carbon
Cell Cycle
Cyclic AMP
Freezing
Fungal Proteins
Genes, Fungal
Genes, ras
Mutation
Nitrogen
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Signal Transduction
ras Proteins