Development of a new xenoestrogen screening system using fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe

Endocrine disrupters refer to environmental or chemical compounds, which interfere with the endocrine system of organisms. In this study, our aim was to develop a screening method to detect xenoestrogen (an endocrine disrupter that is commonly encountered in our daily life) by using fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Although the yeast (the simplest eukaryotic cell) has no endocrine system, estrogen receptors that are created to express in the yeast cell can be activated by estrogen in a similar manner to mammalian cells. First, in order to express the human estrogen receptor (hER) in the yeast cell, we constructed a yeast expression vector that contained hER (pREP42MHN-hER). In the yeast cells that are transformed with the pREP42MHN-hER vector, estrogen receptors could recognize xenoestrogen, which allowed the determination of the presence of xenoestrogen in any given sample. Furthermore, we constructed a yeast strain that contained an estrogen responsive element (ERE) that fused with the Escherichia coli LacZ gene (pERE-LacZ) as a reporter for binding of xenoestrogen with the estrogen receptor. Since this vector system allows determination of the presence and level of xenoestrogen with simple procedures, it is expected that they can serve as an efficient assay system to detect xenoestrogen.