Effects of Glucose on the Cellular Respiration in Fission Yeast Expressing Human GSK3β Gene

Glycogen synthase kinase 3β is a serine/threonine kinase that functions in numerous cellular processes such as cell proliferation, DNA repair, cell cycle, signaling, and metabolic pathways. GSK3β plays a role in several diseases, including inflammation, neurodegenerative disease, diabetes, and cancer. Yeasts are suitable models for the investigation of various cellular processes because they include homologous genes to human genes. In this study, we transferred the human GSK3β gene to Schizosaccharomyces pombe cells (gsk3Δ), including a deletion for this gene. Cells with gsk3 gene deletion and transformant cells with the human GSK3β gene that was reversed by genetic complementation were comparatively examined at the level of gene expression for changes in cellular respiration under varying glucose concentration conditions. For this purpose, the expression of fbp1, pka1 and gsk3 genes were analyzed in cells grown under conditions containing different glucose concentrations. We concluded that the GSK3β gene was expressed more in glucose starvation than in other conditions. We also observed a decrease in the level of gene expression in mitochondrial respiration when the human GSK3β gene was transferred in cells that preferred mitochondrial respiration in the absence of the gsk3 gene, regardless of ambient conditions.