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Inward and outward rectifying potassium currents in Saccharomyces cerevisiae mediated by endogenous and
A Bertl1, J A Anderson, C L Slayman
1Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06510, USA.
Abstract:
Disruption of genes encoding endogenous transport proteins in Saccharomyces cerevisiae has facilitated the recent cloning, by functional expression, of cDNAs encoding K+ channels and amino acid transporters from the plant Arabidopsis thaliana [1-4]. In the present study, we demonstrate in whole-cell patch clamp experiments that the inability of trk1deltatrk2delta mutants of S. cerevisiae to grow on submillimolar K+ correlates with the lack of K+ inward currents, which are present in wild-type cells, and that transformation of the trk1deltatrk2delta double-deletion mutant with KAT1 from Arabidopsis thaliana restores this phenotype by encoding a plasma membrane protein that allows large K+ inward currents. Similar K+ inward currents are induced by transformation of a trk1 mutant with AKT1 from A. thaliana.