Abstract

Glycogen synthase kinase 3β (GSK3B) acts as a signalling and metabolic enzyme and plays a variety of roles in cellular processes such as cell proliferation, DNA repair, cell cycle, signaling, and metabolic processes. GSK3B has been implicated in numerous diseases, including inflammation, neurodegenerative disease, diabetes, and cancer. Yeasts are suitable models for the investigation of various cellular processes because they include homologous genes to human genes. In this study, we transferred the human GSK3B gene to Schizosaccharomyces pombe (Lindner) cells (gsk3Δ) which include a deletion for this gene. Cells with gsk3 gene deletion and transformant cells with the human GSK3B gene that was reversed by genetic complementation were comparatively examined at the level of gene expression for changes in cellular respiration under varying glucose concentration conditions. For this purpose, the expression of fbp1, pka1 and gsk3 genes were analyzed in cells grown under conditions with different glucose concentrations. We revealed that the GSK3B gene was expressed more in glucose starvation conditions than in other conditions. We also observed a decrease in the level of gene expression in mitochondrial respiration when the human GSK3B gene was transferred in cells that preferred mitochondrial respiration in the absence of the gsk3 gene, regardless of ambient conditions.