DNA Methylation Changes Induced by Cold in Psychrophilic and Psychrotolerant Naganishia Yeast Species

Abstract

The involvement of DNA methylation in the response to cold stress of two different yeast species (Naganishia antarctica, psychrophilic, and Naganishia albida, psychrotolerant), exhibiting different temperature aptitudes, has been studied. Consecutive incubations at respective optimum temperatures, at 4 °C (cold stress) and at optimum temperatures again, were performed. After Methylation Sensitive Amplified Polymorphism (MSAP) fingerprints a total of 550 and 423 clear and reproducible fragments were amplified from N. antarctica and N. albida strains, respectively. The two Naganishia strains showed a different response in terms of level of DNA methylation during cold stress and recovery from cold stress. The percentage of total methylated fragments in psychrophilic N. antarctica did not show any significant change. On the contrary, the methylation of psychrotolerant N. albida exhibited a nonsignificant increase during the incubation at 4 °C and continued during the recovery step, showing a significant difference if compared with control condition, resembling an uncontrolled response to cold stress. A total of 12 polymorphic fragments were selected, cloned, and sequenced. Four fragments were associated to genes encoding for elongation factor G and for chitin synthase export chaperon. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on DNA methylation in the response to cold stress carried out by comparing a psychrophilic and a psychrotolerant yeast species.

Root exudates increase soil respiration and alter microbial community structure in alpine permafrost and active layer soils

“…In PF soils, it could be that the basidiomycete yeast Naganashia , often found in extreme cold and dry environments (Schmidt et al ., 2017) as well as in alpine soils at high elevation (Adamczyk et al ., 2019), profited from the addition of labile carbon substrates. Naganashia includes psychrophilic species earlier placed in Cryptococcus (Turchetti et al ., 2020). Ascomycete genera exhibited varied responses.…”

Cold Adaptation Strategies and the Potential of Psychrophilic Enzymes from the Antarctic Yeast, Glaciozyma antarctica PI12

“…Besides, environmental stressors such as heavy metal pollutants and freezing can activate the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), causing intracellular DNA damage [ 7 , 23 , 56 , 57 ]. To overcome this, G. antarctica produces several superoxide dismutases, where mainly manganese superoxide dismutase ( MnSOD ) and peroxiredoxin ( prx ) encoding genes were constitutively expressed [ 52 ].…”

“…Psychrophiles have to develop internal protection such as producing stress-related proteins that sense the internal and external changes and that respond to these stressors. Previous studies have shown that psychrophiles produce HSPs, cold shock proteins (CSPs), cold-active enzymes and molecular chaperones to encumber these stressors [ 36 , 57 , 78 , 79 , 80 ].…”

Levaduras adaptadas al frío: el tesoro biotecnológico de la Antártica

“…Aunque la mayoría de las investigaciones que han tratado de descifrar las bases moleculares de la fisiología de las levaduras psicrofílicas se basan en estudios de levaduras modelo que no cuentan con adaptaciones al frío y/o respuestas a condiciones extremas, se sabe que bajo 0 °C algunas levaduras consumen glucosa y acumulan intermediarios del ciclo de Krebs, acetil-CoA, ácido láctico, aminoácidos aromáticos, y poliamidas, sacrificando ATP y en consecuencia elevando la concentración de ADP y AMP (Inouye & Phadtare, 2013;Tsuji, 2016). Recientemente, se describieron cambios en la metilación del DNA y por tanto, en la expresión de ciertos genes involucrados en la síntesis de proteínas y el transporte de quitina entre levaduras psicrófilas y psicrotolerantes del género Naganishia (Turchetti, Marconi, Sannino, Buzzini & Albertini, 2020). Estos patrones diferenciales de metilación podrían ser la base para comprender los fundamentos moleculares de la adaptación de las levaduras al frío, pero se requieren realizar estudios de transcriptómica para confirmarlo.…”