Light-regulated gene expression in yeast.

An important basic requirement of synthetic genetic networks is the option of external control of gene expression. Although several chemically inducible systems are available, all of these suffer from the common problem: the chemical inducers are difficult to remove so that to terminate the response. We have described a regulatory expression system for yeast, which employs light as inducer. This light switch translates light-controlled protein-protein interactions into the transcription of selected genes in a dose-dependent and reversible manner.