Establishment of an “in saccharo” experimental system

Abstract

Many proteins form complexes that function in reaction pathways. Therefore, to understand protein function, it is necessary to reconstitute complexes and pathways in vitro. However, it is not straightforward to achieve full activity in reconstituted systems. To address this problem, we present a yeast system named "in saccharo" analysis, which uses budding yeast for simultaneous expression and analysis of many kinds of non-host proteins, such as human proteins. For this purpose, vectors that can accommodate many genes are required. Here, we describe the construction of a chromosome vector by insertion of unique barcode sequences (BCs) into the ribosomal RNA gene repeat (rDNA). Each unit of the rDNA has a BC that is used as the target for integration of an external gene. Because rDNA is naturally capable of maintaining many repetitive copies, the vector is expected to retain the numerous external genes that may be required for reconstitution of functional protein complexes and reaction pathways. Consistent with this prediction, we were able to clone three human genes that form the RNA silencing pathway, which has no functional equivalent in budding yeast, and to demonstrate functionality in this in saccharo analysis system.