Mitochondrial retrograde control of transcription evolves with respiratory stress, metabolic adaptation, and virulence in budding yeasts.

ABSTRACT: The pathway involving the paralogous transcription factors Rtg1 and Rtg3 was first described in Saccharomyces cerevisiae as the retrograde regulation that adapts cellular metabolism in response to the state of mitochondrial respiration. We investigated the evolution of this pathway by studying its target genes in respiratory-deficient mutants of Candida albicans-a phylogenetically distant and metabolically distinct yeast species. We show that in C. albicans the Rtg pathway is also responsible for adaptation to cellular stresses related to respiratory dysfunction, but the repertoire of its target genes is different than in S. cerevisiae, and includes genes encoding proteins involved in alternative respiration, oxidative stress, mitophagy, and other aspects of metabolism. We also traced the

SUBMITTER: Labedzka-Dmoch K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12862490 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature