The Plant Science Student Conference (PSSC) has been organised by students from the two Leibniz institutes, IPK and IPB, every year for the last 20 years. In this interview, Christina Wäsch (IPK) and Carolin Apel (IPB)…
Over 600 guests came to the IPB on July 4 for the Long Night of Sciences to learn lots of new things and put their knowledge to the test at our science quiz course. This year, our program was aimed equally at children and…
Our 10th Leibniz Plant Biochemistry Symposium on May 7 and 8 was a great success. This year's theme was new methods and research approaches in natural product chemistry. The excellent presentations on active substances and…
Wysocki, R.; Clemens, S.; Augustyniak, D.; Golik, P.; Maciaszczyk, E.; Tamás, M. J.; Dziadkowiec, D.;Metalloid tolerance based on phytochelatins is not functionally equivalent to the arsenite transporter Acr3pBiochem. Biophys. Res. Commun.304293-300(2003)DOI: 10.1016/S0006-291X(03)00584-9
Active transport of metalloids by Acr3p and Ycf1p in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and chelation by phytochelatins in Schizosaccharomyces pombe, nematodes, and plants represent distinct strategies of metalloid detoxification. In this report, we present results of functional comparison of both resistance mechanisms. The S. pombe and wheat phytochelatin synthase (PCS) genes, when expressed in S. cerevisiae, mediate only modest resistance to arsenite and thus cannot functionally compensate for Acr3p. On the other hand, we show for the first time that phytochelatins also contribute to antimony tolerance as PCS fully complement antimonite sensitivity of ycf1Δ mutant. Remarkably, heterologous expression of PCS sensitizes S. cerevisiae to arsenate, while ACR3 confers much higher arsenic resistance in pcsΔ than in wild-type S. pombe. The analysis of PCS and ACR3 homologues distribution in various organisms and our experimental data suggest that separation of ACR3 and PCS genes may lead to the optimal tolerance status of the cell.