Fig. 2

Synthetic inter-species communication in yeast. The yeast species S. cerevisiae and S. pombe have been designed to communicate artificially via the functional expression and secretion of different pheromones [120, 148]. S. cerevisiae cells were engineered to secrete the α-factor pheromone of S. cerevisiae or the P-factor pheromone of S. pombe, thus providing a possibility for artificial inter-species communication. Likewise, S. pombe cells were engineered to secrete either the P-factor or the α-factor pheromone. The pheromone response of the receiver cells of both species is linked to a cell cycle arrest in G1 phase, a characteristic change in morphology (shmoo effect) and to the expression of reporter genes controlled by pheromone-responsive promoters (e.g., the S. cerevisiae FIG1 promoter controlling the RFP reporter gene and S. pombe sxa2 promoter controlling the GFP reporter gene). Microscopic images were captured utilizing an Axio Observer Z1 (Carl Zeiss, Germany). Scale bars represent 10 μm