The yeast mitochondrial Porin represses Snf1/AMP Kinase signaling to attenuate viral replication

Although fungi are broadly infected with mycoviruses, the antiviral mechanisms fungal cells use to oppose viral replication are not well understood. Here we discover a new mitochondrially controlled signaling mechanism in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae that limits replication of L-A, an RNA mycovirus that endemically infects this organism. We show that Por1, the mitochondrial voltage dependent anion channel, prevents hyper-replication of L-A in stationary phase cells that have exhausted media nutrients. By investigating known stationary phase regulators, we find that deletion of the AMP-activated Kinase homolog SNF1 reverses hyper-replication of L-A observed in por1{Delta} cells. This epistatic relationship suggests that Por1 negatively regulates Snf1 in stationary phase cells and derepressed Snf1 promotes L-A hyper-replication. We confirm this model, first demonstrating that POR1 prevents the accumulation of activated Snf1 throughout stationary phase. By investigating Snf1 signaling targets we show that this POR1-SNF1 regulatory mechanism acts in stationary phase cells to limit amino acid availability that sustain L-A replication. POR1-SNF1 signaling represents a novel physiological control mechanism to limit viral replication in a eukaryotic cell.