PNNL

Abstract

A method to quantitatively relate stress to response at the level of gene expression is described using Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model organism. Stress was defined as the magnitude of perturbation and strain was defined as the magnitude of cumulative response in terms of gene expression. Expression patterns of sixty genes previously reported to be significantly impacted by osmotic shock or belonging to the high-osmotic glycerol, glycerolipid metabolism, and glycolysis pathways were determined following perturbations of increasing sodium chloride concentrations (0, 0.5, 0.7, 1.0, 1.5, and 1.4 M). Expression of these genes was quantified temporally using reverse transcriptase real time polymerase chain reaction. The magnitude of cumulative response was obtained by calculating the total moment of area of the temporal response envelope for all the 60 genes, either together or for the set of genes related to each pathway. A non-linear relationship between stress and response was observed for the range of stress studied. This study examines a quantitative approach to quantify the strain at the level of gene expression to relate stress to strain in biological systems. The approach should be generally applicable to quantitatively evaluate the response of organisms to environmental change.