Global transcriptomic profiling of Schizosaccharomyces pombe in response to nitrosative stress

• Microarray analysis was performed in S. pombe under nitrosative stress.
• 2544 reported genes were differentially expressed under nitrosative stress.
• 818 genes were significantly differentially expressed by at least 2-fold.
• 257 genes were significantly induced and 561 genes were significantly repressed.
• 45 genes are controlled by transcription factor Pap1 under nitrosative stress.

Excess production of nitric oxide (NO) and reactive nitrogen intermediates (RNIs) cause nitrosative stress on cells. Schizosaccharomyces pombe was used as a model to study nitrosative stress response. This is the first report on the global gene expression profile in response to NO in S. pombe using microarray. Among the 4824 genes reported for S. pombe, 818 were differentially expressed by at least 2-fold upon NO donor treatment. We previously showed that Pap1, the Activator Protein 1 transcription factor is required to combat nitrosative stress. In this study, the transcriptional response to NO in a null mutant for pap1 identified 45 genes that seem to be controlled by Pap1. Surprisingly, Pap1 regulated genes in S. pombe were distinctly different under nitrosative stress than those reported under oxidative stress. Genes of the pathway meiosis, cell cycle, spliceosome and oxidative phosphorylation were mostly affected under nitrosative stress in the fission yeast.