Yeast as a Model System to Study Human Diseases
Saccharomyces cerevisiae or yeast has served as a toolbox to understand human physiology and has gathered significant attention over the last three decades. Given that scientists have extensively studied it and there is significant homology of its genes t
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Ashu M. Poswal and Adesh K. Saini
Abstract
Saccharomyces cerevisiae or yeast has served as a toolbox to understand human physiology and has gathered significant attention over the last three decades. Given that scientists have extensively studied it and there is significant homology of its genes to humans and conservation of important cellular pathways in both, yeast has become one of the most popular model systems to study human diseases. Here in the current chapter, we are dealing with the yeast as a model organism for three important human health aspects, viz., neurodegenerative diseases, aging, and cancer. These human health conditions follow very complex pathways, and it will be worth observing how a simple unicellular organism is used to study these health conditions. It has been found that many of the genes in yeast can be very easily deleted and complemented with human orthologues. Now if the human genes thus complemented contain a set of mutations responsible for a health condition, then the molecular details for the cause of disease can be worked out using yeast system, which then can be precisely extrapolated in human systems that are otherwise difficult to do. Not only this, yeast model expressing defective human proteins can also be used in the screening of metabolites or novel compounds that could suppress the phenotypic defects owing to mutations. Keywords
Yeast • Neurodegenerative disease • Aging • Cancer • Human orthologues
A.M. Poswal • A.K. Saini, Ph.D. (*) Faculty of Applied Sciences and Biotechnology, Shoolini University, Solan 173 229, Himachal Pradesh, India e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 V.C. Kalia, A.K. Saini (eds.), Metabolic Engineering for Bioactive Compounds, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5511-9_10
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A.M. Poswal and A.K. Saini
10.1 Introduction Due to less practicability of steering direct study on human for their different health conditions or diseases, researchers were always looking for alternatives that are not only cheap but also scientifically accepted. After three decades of intensive research, a wide array of model organisms are now their first choices. A number of model organisms are currently used as a disease model system, for example, Drosophila melanogaster, transgenic mice, Caenorhabditis elegans, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, etc.; however, over the recent past years, S. cerevisiae “the budding yeast” has emerged as one of the most frequently used disease model organisms (Franssens et al. 2013; Laurent et al. 2015). Yeast is a unicellular organism and the basic features of its genome are: • • • •
Genome size: 12.5 Mb + rDNA (rDNA usually 1–2 Mb) Chromosome no.: 16 Mitochondrial DNA: 75 kb Extrachromosomal DNA: 2 μm (Olson 1991)
Yeast cells exist as both haploid and diploid forms which are morphologically similar but differ in many other important ways. First haploid cells contain 16 chromosomes and the diploid cells contain 32 chromosomes. Second, round-shaped haploid cells are smaller as compared to the ovoid-shaped elongate
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