Using systems biology to determine how budding yeast coordinates carbon and nitrogen sensing for efficient growth

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A hallmark of life is the ability to sense and respond to change, and even unicellular organisms have this ability. They are able to sense changes in the availability of nutrients and adjust the rate at which they grow to new environments. Although we know the proteins involved in making this choice, we do not understand how they interact to enable cells to "decide" appropriately. A difficulty is monitoring the proteins as they perform decision-making. We will use bakers' yeast, a cell with a nucleus like our own cells, where we can measure its decision-making activity by the shuttling of proteins in and out of the nucleus. By exposing cells to changing levels of carbon and nitrogen sources - two essential nutrients, and by transiently removing proteins that are key to signalling, we will characterise how sensing is coordinated with growth. Through integrating this data with mathematical modelling, we will infer the decision-making strategy that is most supported by our results. Evolution means that yeast cells are related to human cells, and signalling proteins in yeast are similar to our own signalling proteins. This task of coordinating growth with the availability nutrients is fundamental, and the strategy we uncover should therefore be general and operate too in other organisms.