Energy coupling of metabolite transport in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

In living cells, transport proteins allow for the translocation of molecules across biological membranes that are otherwise impermeable to charged and polar solutes. These membrane associated proteins play an essential role in the uptake of substrate molecules and export of metabolic products, as well as in the maintenance of electrochemical gradients across membranes, which are exploited energy stores by all living cells. Over the course of evolution, a variety of transport proteins have emerged, with diverse substrate specificities, kinetics and mechanisms. To study the transport function of proteins, the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been widely used as a model organism for the expression and functional characterization of heterologous genes encoding these transport proteins. Aside from numerous advantageous traits that facilitate its cultivation and genetic modification, another benefit of using this yeast as a model is that there is already a vast collection of knowledge available in the scientific literature on its native complement of transport proteins. Besides studying the diversity of transporters already present in nature, (targeted) changes to transport proteins can be introduced that can alter their biological function...