Cell-to-cell heterogeneity of phosphate gene expression in yeast is controlled by alternative transcription, 14-3-3 and Spl2

We investigated the effect of deletion of BMH1, SPL2 and RRP6 on gene expression in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In addition, the effect of 60 min phosphate starvation was studied in the SPL2 deletion mutant as well as in the parental strain BY4741. Finally, the effect of deletion of specific parts of the SPL2 promoter was investigated. Transcriptome analysis was performed by strand-specific RNAseq. For BY4741 three independent cultures cultivated at 7.2 mM potassium phosphate and three independent cultures cultivated without phosphate were used. For spl2Δ three independent cultures cultivated at 7.2 mM potassium phosphate and two independent cultures cultivated without phosphate were used. For bmh1Δ one culture cultivated at 7.2 mM potassium phosphate was used. For rrp6Δ RNAseq was done in a separate experiment including two independent cultures of rr6Δ and one culture of BY4741 cultivated at 7.2 mM potassium phosphate. For studying the effect of deletion of block P of the SPL2 promoter a separate experiment was conducted with one culture of BY4741 and one culture of BY4741 ΔP cultivated at 7.2 mM potassium phosphate.