Objectives

Preliminaries
Primary to the our investigations we will have to set the conditions of our experiments, focusing on the following aspects:

A.Selection of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae laboratory strains most suitable for our experiments.
B.Setting the parameters for cellular growth under conditions of high heavy metal (Fe²⁺, Mn²⁺, Cu²⁺, Ni²⁺, Co²⁺, Zn²⁺, Cd²⁺) concentrations; determining the non-lethal stress conditions.
C.Setting the parameters for cellular growth under conditions of essential heavy metal depletion, to determine the defficiency or total depletion conditions.
D.Monitoring the kinetics of metal accumulation, uptake, and export for each individual metal considered.
E.In silico screening of all genes and proteins known so far to participate in the metal transport and homeostasis, in the unfolded protein response, and in the oxidative stress response.

Once these tasks fulfilled, we will focus on the three main directions of our project:

1)Investigation of he Ca²⁺-mediated response to heavy metal stress (both excess and limitation).

2)Effect of heavy metal stress on unfolded protein response

3)Induction of oxidative stress as a result of heavy metal stress