In summary, the measurements of potassium content revealed a lower level of potassium in BYT2 (trk2Δ) and BYT12 (trk1Δ trk2Δ) stationary cells and confirmed the importance of Trk2 activity for the potassium homeostasis and desiccation survival of stationary cells. Another way of verifying the importance of Trk2 for stationary cells was by testing the growth resumption of stationary cells. Cells grown in YPD supplemented with 50 mM KCl for 40 h, were harvested,

washed, resuspended in fresh YPD with KCl, and the growth of cultures followed in a microplate reader. In parallel, the CFU was OSI-744 chemical structure estimated to know the amount of viable cells in the inoculum. The growth of parental strains BY4741

Selleckchem Ixazomib and the BYT1 strain lacking the Trk1 system was almost the same, but the strain lacking the Trk2 transporter had a significantly longer lag phase (about 3 h longer) than the other two strains (not shown) despite the number of viable cells in the inoculum being almost the same (c. 5% difference, not shown). This result suggests that a relatively quick growth resumption depends on the presence and activity of Trk2, and the prolonged lag phase of BYT2 (trk2Δ) cells might be due to the need to first synthesize/reactivate Trk1. When we compared our results with those obtained from a whole-genome study (Rodriguez-Porrata et al., 2012) we found some differences. First, the study employing the EUROSCARF single null mutant collection in the BY4742 background, found, among other things, the nha1Δ mutant to be sensitive to desiccation. In our experiments, we did not see a significant difference between the parental strain BY4741 and the two strains lacking Nha1 and other potassium efflux systems (BYT45 and BYT345). This could be due to the different experimental conditions. The experimental conditions used for the

whole-genome study were much more severe than our conditions (20% vs. 70% survival of the parental strains, respectively). The fact that the study with the mutant collection however did not reveal the TRK2 gene to be important for desiccation survival might be due to the use of minimal YNB medium and no addition of extra KCl. When we used YNB media supplemented with KCl, we observed a poorer survival of YNB-grown cells in our conditions of dehydration/rehydration. Nevertheless, significant differences in desiccation survival, although lower than for YPD-grown cells, were observed between the strains; c. 18% of BY4741 cells and 6.5% of BYT2 (trk2Δ) cells survived.