Tailoring baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae for functional testing of channelrhodopsin.

ABSTRACT: Channelrhodopsin 2 (ChR2) and its variants are the most frequent tools for remote manipulation of electrical properties in cells via light. Ongoing attempts try to enlarge their functional spectrum with respect to ion selectivity, light sensitivity and protein trafficking by mutations, protein engineering and environmental mining of ChR2 variants. A shortcoming in the required functional testing of large numbers of ChR2 variants is the lack of an easy screening system. Baker's yeast, which was successfully employed for testing ion channels from eukaryotes has not yet been used for screening of ChR2s, because they neither produce the retinal chromophore nor its precursor carotenoids. We found that addition of retinal to the external medium was not sufficient for detecting robust ChR activit

SUBMITTER: Holer S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10101416 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature