Multiple-drug-resistance phenomenon in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae: involvement of two hexose transporters.

In the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, multidrug resistance to unrelated chemicals can result from overexpression of ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters such as Pdr5p, Snq2p, and Yor1p. Expression of these genes is under the control of two homologous zinc finger-containing transcription regulators, Pdr1p and Pdr3p. Here, we describe the isolation, by an in vivo screen, of two new Pdr1p-Pdr3p target genes: HXT11 and HXT9. HXT11 and HXT9, encoding nearly identical proteins, have a high degree of identity to monosaccharide transporters of the major facilitator superfamily (MFS). In this study, we show that the HXT11 product, which allows glucose uptake in a glucose permease mutant (rag1) strain of Kluyveromyces lactis, is also involved in the pleiotropic drug resistance process. Loss of HXT11 and/or HXT9 confers cycloheximide, sulfomethuron methyl, and 4-NQO (4-nitroquinoline-N-oxide) resistance. Conversely, HXT11 overexpression increases sensitivity to these drugs in the wild-type strain, an effect which is more pronounced in a strain having both PDR1 and PDR3 deleted. These data show that the two putative hexose transporters Hxt11p and Hxt9p are transcriptionally regulated by the transcription factors Pdr1p and Pdr3p, which are known to regulate the production of ABC transporters required for drug resistance in yeast. We thus demonstrate the existence of genetic interactions between genes coding for two classes of transporters (ABC and MFS) to control the multidrug resistance process.