Inevitability or contingency: how many chromosomes do we really need?

Building a eukaryotic chromosome arm by de novo design and synthesis

The genome of an organism is inherited from its ancestor and continues to evolve over time, however, the extent to which the current version could be altered remains unknown. To probe the genome plasticity of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, here we replace the native left arm of chromosome XII (chrXIIL) with a linear artificial chromosome harboring small sets of reconstructed genes. We find that as few as 12 genes are sufficient for cell viability, whereas 25 genes are required to recover the partial fitness defects observed in the 12-gene strain. Next, we demonstrate that these genes can be reconstructed individually using synthetic regulatory sequences and recoded open-reading frames with a "one-amino-acid-one-codon" strategy to remain functional. Finally, a synthetic neochromsome with the reconstructed genes is assembled which could substitute chrXIIL for viability. Together, our work not only highlights the high plasticity of yeast genome, but also illustrates the possibility of making functional eukaryotic chromosomes from entirely artificial sequences.

A single chromosome strain of S. cerevisiae exhibits diminished ethanol metabolism and tolerance

BACKGROUND

Eukaryotic organisms, like the model yeast S. cerevisiae, have linear chromosomes that facilitate organization and protection of nuclear DNA. A recent work described a stepwise break/repair method that enabled fusion of the 16 chromosomes of S. cerevisiae into a single large chromosome. Construction of this strain resulted in the removal of 30 of 32 telomeres, over 300 kb of subtelomeric DNA, and 107 subtelomeric ORFs. Despite these changes, characterization of the single chromosome strain uncovered modest phenotypes compared to a reference strain.

RESULTS

This study further characterized the single chromosome strain and found that it exhibited a longer lag phase, increased doubling time, and lower final biomass concentration compared with a reference strain when grown on YPD. These phenotypes were amplified when ethanol was added to the medium or used as the sole carbon source. RNAseq analysis showed poor induction of genes involved in diauxic shift, ethanol metabolism, and fatty-acid ß-oxidation during growth on ethanol compared to the reference strain. Enzyme-constrained metabolic modeling identified decreased flux through the enzymes that are encoded by these poorly induced genes as a likely cause of diminished biomass accumulation. The diminished growth on ethanol for the single chromosome strain was rescued by nicotinamide, an inhibitor of sirtuin family deacetylases, which have been shown to silence gene expression in heterochromatic regions.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results indicate that sirtuin-mediated silencing in the single chromosome strain interferes with growth on non-fermentable carbon sources. We propose that the removal of subtelomeric DNA that would otherwise be bound by sirtuins leads to silencing at other loci in the single chromosome strain. Further, we hypothesize that the poorly induced genes in the single chromosome strain during ethanol growth could be silenced by sirtuins in wildtype S. cerevisiae during growth on glucose.