Apart from energy transformation, mitochondria play important signaling roles. In
yeast, mitochondrial signaling relies on several molecular cascades. However, it
is not clear how a cell detects a particular mitochondrial malfunction. The
problem is that there are many possible manifestations of mitochondrial
dysfunction. For example, exposure to the specific antibiotics can either
decrease (inhibitors of respiratory chain) or increase (inhibitors of
ATP-synthase) mitochondrial transmembrane potential. Moreover, even in the
absence of the dysfunctions, a cell needs feedback from mitochondria to
coordinate mitochondrial biogenesis and/or removal by mitophagy during the
division cycle. To cope with the complexity, only a limited set of compounds is
monitored by yeast cells to estimate mitochondrial functionality. The known
examples of such compounds are ATP, reactive oxygen species, intermediates of
amino acids synthesis, short peptides, Fe-S clusters and heme, and also the
precursor proteins which fail to be imported by mitochondria. On one hand, the
levels of these molecules depend not only on mitochondria. On the other hand,
these substances are recognized by the cytosolic sensors which transmit the
signals to the nucleus leading to general, as opposed to mitochondria-specific,
transcriptional response. Therefore, we argue that both ways of
mitochondria-to-nucleus communication in yeast are mostly (if not completely)
unspecific, are mediated by the cytosolic signaling machinery and strongly
depend on cellular metabolic state.