Design and Operation of the Trehalose Cycle in Yeast

The physiological hallmark of heat shock response in yeast is a rapid, enormous increase in the concentration of trehalose. Normally found in growing yeast cells and other organisms only as traces, trehalose becomes a crucial protector of proteins and membranes against a variety of stresses, including heat, cold, starvation, desiccation, osmotic or oxidative stress, and exposure to toxicants. Trehalose is produced from glucose 6-phosphate and uridine diphosphate glucose in a two-step process, and recycled to glucose by trehalases. Even though the trehalose cycle consists of only a few metabolites and enzymatic steps, its regulatory structure and operation are surprisingly complex. The goal of this project is to elucidate in fine detail the structure, regulation, and multi-level functioning of the pathway under normal and stress conditions.

[8] Voit, E.O., and T. Radivoyevitch: Biochemical systems analysis of genome-wide expression data, Bioinformatics 16(11), 1023-1037, 2000.

[9] Voit, E.O.: Biochemical and genomic regulation of the trehalose cycle in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. J. Theor. Biol., 223, 55-78, 2003.


Click image to view:

from [9]	from [9]