Fig. 2: Characterisation of trans-activation modules.

a The trans-activation effects of synthetic trans-activators on the hybrid CYC1 core promoters. DBD, DNA-binding domain. TA, trans-activating domain. b The trans-activation effects of synthetic trans-activators on the hybrid TEF1 promoters. c The trans-activation effects of synthetic trans-activators on the hybrid GAL promoters. Trans-activators are expressed under the control of the HAC1 promoter on a single copy centromeric plasmid. The yEGFP fluorescence were characterised in the cells grown to the early exponential growth phase (EXP) or the ethanol-growth phase (ETH) in MES-buffered YNB media using 20 g L⁻¹ glucose as the carbon source in 96-well plates. #, yeast cells were grown in test tubes. N.G., not growing. The dashed horizontal line indicates the output from the native TEF1 promoter (Fig. 1), and the solid line indicates the output from the native TDH3 promoter in the EXP-phase cells³⁹. GFP fluorescence is expressed as percentage of exponential-phase auto-fluorescence of a GFP-negative strain. Mean values ± standard deviations are shown (N = 3 independent biological replicates) or mean values are shown (N = 3 independent biological replicates but one replicate was removed as outlier or no data available). Two-tailed Welch’s t-test was used for comparing two groups, and p values are shown above the bars. Source data in a–c are provided in Supplementary Data 1.