Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Het1 Gene Of The Mitochondrial Distribution Relationship

Mitochondria are important organelles in Eukaryotic cells, the energy factories. Mitochondria contain their own set of genetic material, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), its encoded proteins involve in series metabolism processes. Compared the nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA has a different way to inherit. Mitochondria distribute together with cytoplasm to the daughter cells. Mitochondrial dysfunction often leads to cell lethality in other organisms. Saccharomyces cerevisiae can survive by accessing energy through anaerobic respiration. Therefore, yeast has been widely used to study inheritance and segregation of mitochondria.Mitochondrial dynamics in yeast involve division, fusion, distribution and stability. They affect mitochondria inheritance, and regulated by specific genes, such as MDV1(Mitochondrial DiVision 1), MGM1 (Mitochondrial Genome Maintenance 1) and ABF2 (ARS-Binding Factor 2).In previous studies, our lab found a new major effect gene, HET1, that relative to ethanol toleranse. Follow-up study found that HET1 is relevant to the distribution of mitochondria in diploid yeast sporulation, while it does not matter with the maintenance of mtDNA copy number in normal cells. Tetrad spores generated by HET1 missing diploid strains have significantly different in mtDNA copy number. We speculate that HET1 control of mitochondrial distribution occurred in the sporulation process during the first meiotic division.The stability of mitochondrial is an important factor for ethanol tolerance. However, the uneven mitochondrial distribution individuals do not show any correlation to ethanol tolerance. This may be explained by the reason that the uneven distribution of mitochondrial is not lethal.In this thisis, we found that HET1 associate with the distribution of mitochondria during yeast sporulation, which would throw light on HET1 functional study in the future.