A non-toxic, abscisic acid-based anchor-away system for efficient nuclear depletion of budding yeast proteins

ABSTRACT: With the aim of overcoming some of the problems associated with yeast genetic depletion systems, we developed a modified anchor-away (AA) system that relies on a chemically induced dimerization system involving the plant phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA). An advantage of employing this CID in an anchor-away system is that ABA is inexpensive, non-toxic to humans and it is easy to reverse the effect of ABA by simply washing out the hormone. Here we demonstrate that the ABA CID can be effectively employed as an AA system in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We tested the ABA-AA with three proteins that accumulate at very different levels in the cell. We found that even for a highly abundant and essential proteasome component we were still able to get a ~50% decrease in cell growth upon ABA treatment. Compared to the rapamycin AA system, higher concentrations of the chemical is needed to observe a phenotypical effect. Nevertheless, we show that even at these high concentrations, ABA does not noticeably impair cellular growth nor does it cause major changes in gene expression in exponentially growing yeast. We propose that the ABA anchor-away system is highly complementary to existing tools but has no toxicity issues. Because of its simplicity, we anticipate it will be broadly useful.

ORGANISM(S): Saccharomyces cerevisiae BY4741

PROVIDER: GSE149746 | GEO | 2025/11/22

REPOSITORIES: GEO