Search

Numerous studies have determined that the establishment of Sir protein-dependent transcriptional silencing in yeast requires progression through the cell cycle. In our study we examined the cell cycle requirement for the establishment of silencing at the HML and HMR loci using strains bearing conditional or inducible SIR3 alleles. Consistent with prior reports, we observed that establishing silencing at HMR required progression through the cell cycle. Unexpectedly, we found that the HML locus is far less dependent on cell cycle progression to establish silencing. Seeking cis-acting elements that could account for this difference, we found that deletion of a tRNA gene that serves as a chromatin boundary at HMR abolishes the cell cycle progression requirement at this locus, while insertion of sequences containing this tRNA gene adjacent to HML imposes dependence on cell cycle progression for the full establishment of silencing. Our results indicate that the cell cycle progression requirement is not a property intrinsic to the formation of heterochromatin in yeast, but is instead a cis-limited, locus-specific phenomenon. We show that inactivation of the Scc1 cohesin also abolishes the requirement for cell cycle progression and test models based on a possible link between the tRNA gene and cohesin association.

Sir2 is an NAD+-dependent histone deacetylase required to mediate transcriptional silencing and suppress rDNA recombination in budding yeast. We previously identified Tdh3, a glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), as a high expression suppressor of the lethality caused by Sir2 overexpression in yeast cells. Here we show that Tdh3 interacts with Sir2, localizes to silent chromatin in a Sir2-dependent manner, and promotes normal silencing at the telomere and rDNA. Characterization of specific TDH3 alleles suggests that Tdh3's influence on silencing requires nuclear localization but does not correlate with its catalytic activity. Interestingly, a genetic assay suggests that Tdh3, an NAD+-binding protein, influences nuclear NAD+ levels; we speculate that Tdh3 links nuclear Sir2 with NAD+ from the cytoplasm., Author Summary Cells respond to changing signals or environmental conditions by altering the expression of their genes. For instance, our cells respond to the presence of glucose or insulin in the bloodstream by regulating the expression of genes involved in basic cell metabolism. The sirtuin family of proteins has been proposed to serve as a link between a cell's metabolic state and gene expression, although the molecular mechanisms that connect metabolic status with Sir2 activity remain unclear. The expression of genes is controlled in part by the structural organization of the local chromatin region within which they reside. The yeast sirtuin protein, Sir2, mediates repression (“silencing”) of sets of genes by modulating the structural organization of specific chromatin regions. In this study we describe a novel link between a key metabolic enzyme and Sir2 function. We show that a yeast GAPDH protein, which plays a central role in glucose metabolism, also associates with Sir2 in the nucleus and promotes Sir2-dependent gene silencing. Sirtuin activity requires a small molecule, NAD+, whose availability may fluctuate depending on the metabolic state of the cell. Based on our data, we suggest that Tdh3 may promote silencing by maintaining sufficient levels of NAD+ available to Sir2 within the nucleus.