Functional Studies of the Yeast Med5, Med15 and Med16 Mediator Tail Subunits

The yeast Mediator complex can be divided into three modules, designated Head, Middle and Tail. Tail comprises the Med2, Med3, Med5, Med15 and Med16 protein subunits, which are all encoded by genes that are individually non-essential for viability. In cells lacking Med16, Tail is displaced from Head and Middle. However, inactivation of MED5/MED15 and MED15/MED16 are synthetically lethal, indicating that Tail performs essential functions as a separate complex even when it is not bound to Middle and Head. We have used the N-Degron method to create temperature-sensitive (ts) mutants in the Mediator tail subunits Med5, Med15 and Med16 to study the immediate effects on global gene expression when each subunit is individually inactivated, and when Med5/15 or Med15/16 are inactivated together. We identify 25 genes in each double mutant that show a significant change in expression when compared to the corresponding single mutants and to the wild type strain. Importantly, 13 of the 25 identified genes are common for both double mutants. We also find that all strains in which MED15 is inactivated show down-regulation of genes that have been identified as targets for the Ace2 transcriptional activator protein, which is important for progression through the G1 phase of the cell cycle. Supporting this observation, we demonstrate that loss of Med15 leads to a G1 arrest phenotype. Collectively, these findings provide insight into the function of the Mediator Tail module.