The role of PDR13 in tolerance to high copper stress in budding yeast

Abstract

PDR13 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae contributes to drug resistance via sequential activation of PDR1 and PDR5. In this study, we found that a PDR13 deletion mutant was hypersensitive to Cu2+ compared to the wild-type counterpart. The Cu2+ tolerance mechanism mediated by Pdr13 does not seem to involve Pdr1 or Pdr5, since mutants harboring a deletion of either the PDR1 or PDR5 gene did not show elevated Cu2+ sensitivity. Instead, we found that the PDR13 null mutant could not express CUP1 or CRS5 metallothionein at wild-type levels when subjected to high Cu2+ stress. These results suggest that Pdr13 contributes to high Cu2+ tolerance of S. cerevisiae, at least in part, via a mechanism involving metallothionein expression. (C) 2001 Federation of European Biochemical Societies. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.