The global map of Rio1 activity in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the kinase Rio1 regulates rDNA transcription and segregation, pre-rRNA cleavage, and 40S ribosomal subunit maturation. Other roles are unknown. Human orthologue RIOK1; which is frequently overexpressed in malignancies, drives tumor growth and metastasis. Again, also RIOK1 biology is poorly understood. In this study, we charted the global activity of Rio1 in budding yeast. By producing and systems-integrating its protein-interaction, gene-transcription, and chromatin-binding maps we generated Rio1's multi-layered activity network, which controls protein synthesis and turnover, metabolism, growth, proliferation, and genetic stability. Rio1 regulates itself at the transcriptional level, and manages its network both directly and indirectly, via a battery of regulators and transcription factors, including Gcn4. We experimentally confirmed the network and show that Rio1 commands its downstream circuit depending on the growth conditions encountered. We also find that Rio1 and RIOK1 activities are functionally equivalent. Our data suggest that pathological RIOK1 expression may deregulate its network and fuel promiscuous transcription and ribosome production, uncontrolled metabolism, growth, proliferation, and chromosomal instability; well-known contributors to cancer initiation, maintenance and metastasis. ChIP-on-chip analyses were carried out as described in Bermejo R. et al., Meth. Mol. Biol. 582: 103-18 (2009). Labelled probes were hybridized to Affymetrix S.cerevisiae Tiling 1.0 (P/N 900645) arrays and processed with TAS software.