Cloning and characterization of Saccharomyces cerevisiae genes that confer L-methionine sulfoximine and tabtoxin resistance

Pseudomonas tabaci produces a toxin, tabtoxin, that causes wildfire disease in tobacco. The primary target of tabtoxin is presumed to be glutamine synthetase. Some effects of tabtoxin in tobacco can be mimicked by methionine sulfoximine (MSO), a compound that is known to inactivate glutamine synthetase. To understand how organisms can be made resistant to tabtoxin and MSO, we used Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We demonstrate that yeast strains carrying the glutamine synthetase gene, GLN1, on a multicopy plasmid overproduced glutamine synthetase and showed increased drug resistance. These and other data indicate that glutamine synthetase is the primary target of tabtoxin and MSO in S. cerevisiae. We also isolated three S. cerevisiae DNA inserts of 2.1, 2.3, and 2.8 kilobases that conferred tabtoxin and MSO resistance when the inserts were present on a multicopy plasmid. These plasmids conferred resistance to MSO by blocking intracellular transport of the drug. Transport appeared to occur by one or more methionine permeases. Resistance to tabtoxin could also occur by blockage of intracellular transport, but the drug was transported by some permease other than methionine permease. These drug resistance plasmids did not block transport of citrulline, indicating that they did not affect the general amino acid permease.