An Ancient Yeast for Young Geneticists: A Primer on theSchizosaccharomyces pombeModel System

Abstract

The fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe is an important model organism for the study of eukaryotic molecular and cellular biology. Studies of S. pombe, together with studies of its distant cousin, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, have led to the discovery of genes involved in fundamental mechanisms of transcription, translation, DNA replication, cell cycle control, and signal transduction, to name but a few processes. However, since the divergence of the two species approximately 350 million years ago, S. pombe appears to have evolved less rapidly than S. cerevisiae so that it retains more characteristics of the common ancient yeast ancestor, causing it to share more features with metazoan cells. This Primer introduces S. pombe by describing the yeast itself, providing a brief description of the origins of fission yeast research, and illustrating some genetic and bioinformatics tools used to study protein function in fission yeast. In addition, a section on some key differences between S. pombe and S. cerevisiae is included for readers with some familiarity with budding yeast research but who may have an interest in developing research projects using S. pombe.

A Brief History ofSchizosaccharomyces pombeResearch: A Perspective Over the Past 70 Years

“…Since that time, research on S. pombe has expanded to the point where it is one of the best-characterized model eukaryotes for studying cell biology at the molecular level. This can be seen by the rise in the number of publications on S. pombe from 50 in 1985 to almost nine times that number in 1999 (Hoffman et al 2015), the year of the First International Fission Yeast Meeting held in Edinburgh (Partridge and Allshire 2000). Much of the interest in S. pombe came in response to the cell-cycle studies carried out in the 1970s and 1980s that were later recognized with a 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Paul Nurse ( Figure 1).…”

“…Research on S. pombe has been well documented and summarized in two books (Nasim et al 1989;Egel 2004) as well as in review articles (Russell and Nurse 1986;Hoffman et al 2015). This article presents the story of the growth and development of the S. pombe community from its beginnings to the maturity of the research field at the time of the First International Fission Yeast Meeting held in 1999.…”

Genetic controls of DNA damage avoidance in response to acetaldehyde in fission yeast

“…This is due to the fact that all laboratory S. pombe strains are derived from the same standard strains, allowing for straightforward genetic interpretations. [26][27][28] Furthermore, S. pombe appeared to have experienced less evolutionary changes since it diverged from the common ancestor. Thus, similarities between S. pombe and mammals are generally considered to be higher than similarities between S. cerevisiae and mammals.…”

“…Thus, similarities between S. pombe and mammals are generally considered to be higher than similarities between S. cerevisiae and mammals. 27,29 Therefore, in this study, we dissect the genetic pathways that are required for acetaldehyde tolerance by using S. pombe, in which multiple isogenic strains can be used. We show that acetaldehyde causes increased levels of DNA damage when cells are deficient for aldehyde dehydrogenase.…”

Atg20- and Atg24-family proteins promote organelle autophagy in fission yeast

“…The fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe is an important unicellular eukaryotic model organism and is evolutionarily distant from the budding yeast S. cerevisiae (Hoffman et al, 2015). We have previously comprehensively identified and characterized the fission yeast genes that are required for starvation-induced autophagy, and unveiled interesting differences in autophagic mechanisms between the two model yeasts (Sun et al, 2013).…”