An investigation into eukaryotic pseudouridine synthases

A common post-transcriptional modification of RNA is the conversion of uridine to its isomer pseudouridine. We investigated the biological significance of eukaryotic pseudouridine synthases using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We conducted a comprehensive statistical analysis on growth data from automated perturbation (gene deletion) experiments, and used bi-logistic curve analysis to characterise the yeast phenotypes. The deletant strains displayed different alteration in growth properties, including in some cases enhanced growth and/or biphasic growth curves not seen in wild-type strains under matched conditions. These results demonstrate that disrupting pseudouridine synthases can have a significant qualitative effect on growth. We further investigated the significance of post-transcriptional pseudouridine modification through investigation of the scientific literature. We found that (1) In Toxoplasma gondii, a pseudouridine synthase gene is critical in cellular differentiation between the two asexual forms: Tachyzoites and bradyzoites; (2) Mutation of pseudouridine synthase genes has also been implicated in human diseases (mitochondrial myopathy and sideroblastic anemia (MLASA); dyskeratosis congenita). Taken together, these results are consistent with pseudouridine synthases having a Gene Ontology function of biological regulation.