The yeast multidrug resistance pump, Pdr5p, confers reduced drug resistance in erg mutants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Mutants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae bearing lesions in the ergosterol biosynthetic pathway exhibit a pleiotropic drug-sensitive phenotype. This has been reported to result from an increased permeability of the membranes of the mutant strains to different drugs. As disruption of the yeast multidrug resistance protein, Pdr5p, results in a similar pleiotropic drug-sensitive phenotype, the possibility that Pdr5p may be functioning with a reduced efficiency in these altered sterol backgrounds was examined. To do this, the function of Pdr5p in isogenic strains of S. cerevisiae that have disruptions in the late stages of the ergosterol biosynthesis pathway (ERG6, ERG2, ERG3, ERG4) was studied. A reduced ability of Pdr5p to confer resistance to different drugs in these strains was observed, which did not appear to be dependent solely on the permeability of the membrane towards the drug. A simultaneous examination was made of how the lipid composition might be altering the efficiency of Pdr5p by similar studies in strains lacking phosphatidylserine synthase (encoded by CHO1). The results indicated that the drug sensitivity of the erg strains is, to a significant extent, a result of the reduced efficiency of the Pdr5p efflux pump, and that the membrane environment plays an important role in determining the drug resistance conferred by Pdr5p.