Genome wide transcription profiling of the effects of overexpression of Spc1 and its kinase dead mutant in Schizosaccharomyces pombe.

The Mitogen Activated Protein Kinase Spc1 (p38 homolog) is a major player in stress responses of the unicellular fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. This pathway is therefore also known as the SAPK or Stress Activated Protein Kinase pathway. Spc1 is a known activator of transcription factors that control gene expression in response to extracellular stimuli and is also known to interact with the translation machinery [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]. Spc1 has also been implicated in cell cycle regulation and meiosis in S. pombe[1], [2], [9], [10]. Given its documented role in modulating gene expression, we performed a microarray based identification of genes whose expression in unperturbed cells (absence of stress stimuli) is dependent on Spc1. For this we overexpressed Spc1 in S. pombe. Additionally we also overexpressed Spc1K49R (a kinase dead mutant of Spc1) to understand the contribution of Spc1's kinase activity towards the observed gene expression changes. The microarray data are available at NCBI's Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) Series (accession number GSE73618). Here we report the annotation of the genes whose expression get altered by Spc1/Spc1K49R overexpression and also provide details related to sample processing and statistical analysis of our microarray data.