Constitutive and Regulated Promoters in Yeast: How to Design and Make Use of Promoters inS. cerevisiae

This chapter deals with natural and synthetic promoters frequently used in yeast. It describes principles and strategies exploited to produce synthetic promoters and their cognate transcription factors. The chapter points out the essential structural and functional features of yeast promoters. It highlights some examples of both regulated and constitutive natural yeast promoters. The characterization of these sequences allowed for the identification of structural and functional features that are exploited to build synthetic promoters and heterologous transcription factors. Modification of the binding affinity between the transcription factor and its cognate transcription factor binding site (TFBS) results in promoter strength modulation. The chapter discusses two main groups of synthetic promoters. One includes modified versions of natural promoters, and the other contains hybrid promoters. The chapter also describes Saccharomyces cerevisiae promoters. The characterization of S. cerevisiae promoters began by using them to drive expression of reporter genes.