Puf3p facilitates fermentative mitochondrial functions via monosome-enriched nuclear-encoded mitochondrial mRNAs in budding yeast

ABSTRACT Yeasts generally grow with a highly glycolytic metabolism and restrain mitochondrial biogenesis except for some Fe/S proteins. Respiratory mitochondrial functions and biosynthesis pathways are well studied, however how cells coordinate basal fermentative mitochondrial functions is not fully understood. We show that a part of nuclear-encoded mitochondrial mRNAs, which preferentially translated in monosomes, are regulated by Puf3p upon glucose-rich media. Especially, of those monosome-enriched nuclear-encoded mitochondrial mRNAs, CAT5/COQ7 mRNA has a variant of the canonical Puf3p binding site on its 3’-UTR. Western blot analysis showed that Puf3p represses the translation of Cat5p regardless of fermentable or respiratory media. In vitro binding assay revealed that Puf3p directly binds to CAT5 mRNA via the non-canonical Puf3p binding site. Mutants harboring the substitution of the non-canonical Puf3p binding site in CAT5 mRNA grew normally but impaired Cat5p expressions apparently, indicating CAT5 mRNA is a bona fide Puf3p target. Overall, Puf3p, a general key modulator for nuclear-encoded mitochondrial mRNAs, fine-tunes translation of a subset of nuclear-encoded mitochondrial mRNAs including mRNAs with non-canonical Puf3p binding sites under the fermentation. This may be required to keeping the fundamental functions of yeast mitochondria at proper levels.