Study of the Kluyveromyces lactis Pdr1p regulon

The transcription factor KlPdr1p, belonging to the Zn2Cys6 family, is a central regulator of efflux pump expression in Kluyveromyces lactis. To better understand how KlPDR1-mediated drug resistance is achieved in K. lactis, we used DNA microarrays to identify genes whose expression was affected by deletion or overexpression of the KlPDR1 gene. All microarray experiments were performed using the 30K Kluyveromyces lactis NRRL Y-1140 microarray (MYcroarray, 5692 Plymouth Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48105, USA). Exponentially growing (1 x 107 cells ml-1) K. lactis PM6-7A cells (wild-type, PM6-7A/pdr1∆ and the wild-type transformed with multicopy plasmid carrying the gain-of-function allele of KlPDR1* gene) (Balazfyova et al. 2013), were collected and total RNA was isolated using RNeasy midi kit (Qiagen GmbH, Germany). 1 mg of total RNA was linearly amplified and labelled using Amino allyl MessageAmpII aRNA Amplification kit (Ambion, USA) with two different fluorescent dyes; AlexaFluor647 and AlexaFluor555 (Life Technologies, Germany). 4 µg of labelled RNA was hybridized (18 h at 45°C) in 6x SSPE with addition of formamide (10%), tween-20 (0,01%) and microarray-specofoc control oligos (1%, MYcroarray, USA). After washing, microarray images and two-color GPR output files were obtained using the microarray scanner InnoScan 900 and Mapix software version 7.3.1 (Inopsys, France). The two-color GPR files were processed using the R version 3.0.2 (R Core Team (2014). R: A language and enviroment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL http://www.R-project.org) and functions available in the limma package (Smyth 2005). Briefly, the two-color GPR files were omported using the read.maimages() function, background-substracted using the “minimum“ method and within-array-normalized using the “loess“ method. The between-array normalisation was achieved using the “Aquantile“ method. For further analysis, only genes with log2FC ˃2 were selected and confirmed using qPCR. Overall design: Whole K. lactis genome analysis to identify genes whose expression was affected by deletion or overexpression of the KlPDR1 gene. Two two-color microarrays were hybridised as follows: yeast deletion mutant against the wild type control and yeast transformant against the wild-type control.