Deconstructing Golgi inheritance

Eukaryotic cells use a variety of strategies to inherit the Golgi apparatus. During vertebrate mitosis, the Golgi reorganizes dramatically in a process that seems to be driven by the reversible fragmentation of existing Golgi structures and the temporary redistribution of Golgi components to the endoplasmic reticulum. Several proteins that participate in vertebrate Golgi inheritance have been identified, but their detailed functions remain unknown. A comparison between vertebrates and other eukaryotes reveals common mechanisms of Golgi inheritance. In many cell types, Golgi stacks undergo fission early in mitosis. Some cells exhibit a further Golgi breakdown that is probably due to a mitotic inhibition of membrane traffic. In all eukaryotes examined, Golgi inheritance involves either the partitioning of pre-existing Golgi elements between the daughter cells or the emergence of new Golgi structures from the endoplasmic reticulum, or some combination of these two pathways.

Golgi structure correlates with transitional endoplasmic reticulum organization in Pichia pastoris and Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Golgi stacks are often located near sites of "transitional ER" (tER), where COPII transport vesicles are produced. This juxtaposition may indicate that Golgi cisternae form at tER sites. To explore this idea, we examined two budding yeasts: Pichia pastoris, which has coherent Golgi stacks, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which has a dispersed Golgi. tER structures in the two yeasts were visualized using fusions between green fluorescent protein and COPII coat proteins. We also determined the localization of Sec12p, an ER membrane protein that initiates the COPII vesicle assembly pathway. In P. pastoris, Golgi stacks are adjacent to discrete tER sites that contain COPII coat proteins as well as Sec12p. This arrangement of the tER-Golgi system is independent of microtubules. In S. cerevisiae, COPII vesicles appear to be present throughout the cytoplasm and Sec12p is distributed throughout the ER, indicating that COPII vesicles bud from the entire ER network. We propose that P. pastoris has discrete tER sites and therefore generates coherent Golgi stacks, whereas S. cerevisiae has a delocalized tER and therefore generates a dispersed Golgi. These findings open the way for a molecular genetic analysis of tER sites.

A yeast t-SNARE involved in endocytosis

The ORF YOL018c (TLG2) of Saccharomyces cerevisiae encodes a protein that belongs to the syntaxin protein family. The proteins of this family, t-SNAREs, are present on target organelles and are thought to participate in the specific interaction between vesicles and acceptor membranes in intracellular membrane trafficking. TLG2 is not an essential gene, and its deletion does not cause defects in the secretory pathway. However, its deletion in cells lacking the vacuolar ATPase subunit Vma2p leads to loss of viability, suggesting that Tlg2p is involved in endocytosis. In tlg2Delta cells, internalization was normal for two endocytic markers, the pheromone alpha-factor and the plasma membrane uracil permease. In contrast, degradation of alpha-factor and uracil permease was delayed in tlg2Delta cells. Internalization of positively charged Nanogold shows that the endocytic pathway is perturbed in the mutant, which accumulates Nanogold in primary endocytic vesicles and shows a greatly reduced complement of early endosomes. These results strongly suggest that Tlg2p is a t-SNARE involved in early endosome biogenesis.

A versatile set of vectors for constitutive and regulated gene expression in Pichia pastoris

The budding yeast Pichia pastoris is an attractive system for exploring certain questions in cell biology, but experimental use of this organism has been limited by a lack of convenient expression vectors. Here we describe a set of compact vectors that should allow for the expression of a wide range of endogenous or foreign genes in P. pastoris. A gene of interest is inserted into a modified pUC19 polylinker; targeted integration into the genome then results in stable and uniform expression of this gene. The utility of these vectors was illustrated by expressing the bacterial beta-glucuronidase (GUS) gene. Constitutive GUS expression was obtained with the strong GAP promoter or the moderate YPT1 promoter. The regulatable AOX1 promoter yielded very strong GUS expression in methanol-grown cells, negligible expression in glucose-grown cells, and intermediate expression in mannitol-grown cells. GenBank Accession Numbers are: pIB1, AF027958; pIB2, AF0279959; pIB3, AF027960; pIB4, AF027961.