Malonate uptake and metabolism in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Malonyl-CoA plays an important role in the synthesis and elongation of fatty acids in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Malonyl-CoA is at a low concentration inside the cell and is produced mainly from acetyl-CoA through the enzyme acetyl-CoA carboxylase. It would be beneficial to find an alternative source of malonyl-CoA to increase its intracellular concentration and overall synthesis of the fatty acids. MatB gene from the bacteria Rhizobium leguminosarium bv. trifolii encodes for a malonyl-CoA synthetase which catalyzes the formation of the malonyl-CoA directly from malonate and CoA. However, results from high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) proved that Saccharomyces cerevisiae itself does not contain enough cytoplasmic malonate within them and is unable to uptake exogenously supplied malonate in the form of malonic acid. A dicarboxylic acid plasma membrane transporter with the ability to uptake exogenous malonic acid was identified from another species of yeast known as Schizosaccharomyces pombe and the gene encoding this transporter is identified as the mae1 gene. From the experiments thus far, the mae1 gene had been successfully cloned and transformed into Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The expression and functional ability of the encoded plasma membrane dicarboxylic acid transporter were also demonstrated and verified using specialized technologies such as RT-PCR, yeast immunofluorescence, HPLC, and LC-MS.