The evolution of aerobic fermentation in Schizosaccharomyces pombe was associated with regulatory reprogramming but not nucleosome reorganization.

Aerobic fermentation has evolved independently in two yeast lineages, the Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the Schizosaccharomyces pombe lineages. In the S. cerevisiae lineage, the evolution of aerobic fermentation was shown to be associated with transcriptional reprogramming of the genes involved in respiration and was recently suggested to be linked to changes in nucleosome occupancy pattern in the promoter regions of respiration-related genes. In contrast, little is known about the genetic basis for the evolution of aerobic fermentation in the Sch. pombe lineage. In particular, it is not known whether respiration-related genes in Sch. pombe have undergone a transcriptional reprogramming or changes in nucleosome occupancy pattern in their promoter regions. In this study, we compared genome-wide gene expression profiles of Sch. pombe with those of S. cerevisiae and the aerobic respiration yeast Candida albicans. We found that the expression profile of respiration-related genes in Sch. pombe is similar to that of S. cerevisiae, but different from that of C. albicans, suggesting that their transcriptional regulation has been reprogrammed during the evolution of aerobic fermentation. However, we found no significant nucleosome organization change in the promoter of respiration-related gene in Sch. pombe.