The  BUD31  Homologous Gene in  Schizosaccharomyces pombe  Is Evolutionarily Conserved and Can Be Linked to Cellular Processes Regulated by the TOR Pathway.
The human  BUD31  gene has been associated with various processes including cancer. To better understand its function, we used genetic methods to study  Schizosaccharomyces pombe  cells lacking the  BUD31  homologous gene ( cwf14 ) and performed sequence analysis using bioinformatics methods. Mutant cells lacking the  cwf14  gene showed cell size and division defects, altered stress response, rapamycin sensitivity, enhanced chronological aging, and increased sporulation tendency. These processes are known to be regulated by the TOR pathway. The  cwf14 -TOR link was also supported by further experiments. We demonstrated that most protein-coding genes affected by  cwf14  deletion are upregulated, encode hydrolases, oxidoreductases, and are often involved in transport. GO enrichment drew our attention to genes related to nitrogen transport, while additional data pointed to a nutrient/nitrogen (N) sensing problem. Although Cwf14 protein is associated with spliceosome complex, most genes affected by the absence of  cwf14  do not contain introns, suggesting that they are influenced indirectly by the  cwf14  gene. In silico experiments have revealed that  BUD31  orthologous genes are found from yeast to humans, are evolutionarily conserved with a high degree of sequence identity, conserved motifs, and structures. Since the human gene partially complemented the mutant phenotype of  S. pombe  cells, indicating functional homology, our data can help better understand pathological mechanisms observed in human cancer cells.
Vig I, Acs-Szabo L, Benkő Z, Bagelova Polakova S, Papp LA, Gregan J, Miklós I