Budding yeast generate heterogeneous cells that can be separated into 2 distinctive cell types: short-living low density (LD) and long-living high density (HD) cells by density gradient centrifugation. We found that ethanol and acetate induce formation of HD cells, and mitochondrial respiration is required. From their transcriptomes and metabolomes, we found up-regulated differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in HD cells involved in the RGT2/RGT1 glucose sensing pathway and its down-stream genes encoding hexose transporters. For HD cells, we determined an abundance of various carbon sources including glucose, lactate, pyruvate, trehalose, mannitol, mannose, and galactose. Other up-regulated DEG... More
Budding yeast generate heterogeneous cells that can be separated into 2 distinctive cell types: short-living low density (LD) and long-living high density (HD) cells by density gradient centrifugation. We found that ethanol and acetate induce formation of HD cells, and mitochondrial respiration is required. From their transcriptomes and metabolomes, we found up-regulated differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in HD cells involved in the RGT2/RGT1 glucose sensing pathway and its down-stream genes encoding hexose transporters. For HD cells, we determined an abundance of various carbon sources including glucose, lactate, pyruvate, trehalose, mannitol, mannose, and galactose. Other up-regulated DEGs in HD cells were involved in the TORC1-SCH9 signaling pathway and its down-stream genes involved in cytoplasmic translation. We also measured an abundance of free amino acids in HD cells including valine, proline, isoleucine, and glutamine. These characteristics of the HD cell transcriptome and metabolome may be important conditions for maintaining a long-living phenotype.