Budding Yeast News and Research

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Scientists develop sophisticated assay to track cell growth at low nutrient concentrations

The budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is a prime organism for studying fundamental cellular processes, with the functions of many proteins important in the cell cycle and signaling networks found in human biology having first been discovered in yeast.

18 Sep 2013

Penn State researchers find that protein changes can control gene functions

A Penn State-led research team has found that changes to proteins called histones, which are associated with DNA, can control whether or not a gene is allowed to function. The changes may be important in maintaining the genes' "expression potential" so that future cells behave as their parent cells did.

8 Aug 2013

University of Leicester to launch new research centre to explore complex traits and disease

This week, the University of Leicester launches a new Centre for Genetic Architecture of Complex Traits to explore the building blocks of complex traits and disease.

9 Apr 2013

Budding yeast an acceptable model system to study KP1019 anti-cancer drug

Researchers have found that the budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) is an acceptable model system to study KP1019, an anti-cancer drug that uses ruthenium, a rare metal, a new study found. Researchers had previously been interested in studying KP1019 because it is believed to cause cancer cell death and is not known to have negative secondary side effects for healthy tissues.

19 Dec 2012

Mod5 yeast prion contributes to cell survival under environmental stress

One of the greatest mysterious in cellular biology has been given a new twist thanks to findings reported in Science. Researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute show that prions, proteins that transmit heritable information without DNA or RNA, can contribute to drug resistance and cellular adaptation. Their discovery of a yeast prion with these properties demonstrates the active role of the prion conversion in cellular fitness adaptation, providing new insights into the potentially broader function of prions in living organisms.

23 Apr 2012

Budding yeast helps make useful predictions about the biology of individuals

It now only costs a few thousand Euros to sequence the genome of an individual human. However, for most of us, knowing our genome sequence would not be useful. Each human has more than 20 000 genes, and in each of us several thousand of these genes carry mutations.

16 Nov 2011

Virginia Tech receives NIH grant to develop new systems biology approaches for cell study

The National Institutes of Health has awarded Virginia Tech researchers a $2.13 million grant to develop new systems biology approaches to study cells, one of the most basic units of life.

5 May 2011

Tension-dependent stabilization helps chromosome separation machinery

Scientists have discovered an amazingly simple way that cells stabilize their machinery for forcing apart chromosomes. Their findings are reported Nov. 25 in Nature.

25 Nov 2010

Study discovers multiple effects of SSRIs on cells

A new discovery about selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) suggests that these drugs, which are used to treat mental health disorders like depression and anxiety, have multiple effects on our cells. In a research report published in the August 2010 issue of GENETICS, researchers used yeast cells to identify secondary drug targets or pathways affected by SSRIs. Such secondary pathways could help explain why different people taking the same drug may experience different effects, and could also lead to new types of drugs altogether.

17 Aug 2010

Researchers develop experimental approaches, analysis tools to understand phenotypic expression

The Human Genome Project, along with numerous parallel efforts to solve the DNA sequences of hundreds of animal, plant, fungal, and microbe genomes in the last few decades, has produced enormous amounts of genetic data with which researchers are struggling to keep pace.

23 Jun 2010

NSF Faculty Early Career Development Award for Zhihao Zhuang

Zhihao Zhuang, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Delaware, has won the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award.

17 Apr 2010

Mapping of all fragile sites of yeast S.cerevisiae may lead to better understanding of cancer development

The research group of Dr. Fran-ois Robert, a researcher at the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montr-al (IRCM), in collaboration with the team of Dr. Daniel Durocher (Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute and University of Toronto) accomplished a technical breakthrough: they mapped all the fragile sites of a living organism, the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The method used by the researchers can be applied to humans. This study has been published online today in the scientific journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.

10 Feb 2010

New technology sheds light on intracellular transport

Using new technology developed in his University of Oregon lab, chemist Andrew H. Marcus and his doctoral student Eric N. Senning have captured what they describe as well-orchestrated, actin-driven, mitochondrial movement within a single cell.

18 Dec 2009

Regulatory differences between mother and daughter cells shed new light on cell division

When mother and daughter cells are created each time a cell divides, they are not exactly alike. They have the same set of genes, but differ in the way they regulate them. New research now reveals that these regulatory differences between mother and daughter cells are directly linked to how they prepare for their next split.

20 Oct 2009

Biologists discover link between CGG repeats in DNA and neurological disorders

Researchers have long known that some repetitive DNA sequences can make human chromosomes "fragile," i.e. appearing constricted or even broken during cell divisions.

12 Jan 2009

Biologists identify genes that prevent changes in physical traits due to environmental changes

New York University biologists have identified genes that prevent physical traits from being affected by environmental changes.

4 Nov 2008

Scientists identify 25 genes that regulate lifespan

Scientists at the University of Washington and other institutions have identified 25 genes regulating lifespan in two organisms separated by about 1.5 billion years in evolutionary change.

13 Mar 2008

Device allows scientists to control gene activity across generations of cells

Just as cells inherit genes, they also inherit a set of instructions that tell genes when to become active, in which tissues and to what extent.

4 Mar 2008

The cell size problem

For more than 100 years, scientists have tried to figure out the cell size problem: How does a cell know when it is big enough to divide?

25 Sep 2007

Researchers pinpoint when a cell is ready to reproduce

For more than 100 years, scientists have tried to figure out the cell size problem: How does a cell know when it is big enough to divide, In research conducted in budding yeast ( Saccharomyces cerevisiae ), scientists at Rockefeller University have now identified the cellular event that marks the moment when a cell knows it is big enough to commit to cell division and spawn genetic replicas of itself.

24 Sep 2007