̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - yeast

Social yeast cells prefer to work with close relatives to make our beer, bread & wine

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 13:05:30 +0000

̽��ֱ��findings, published today in the open access journal eLife, could lead to new biotechnological production systems based on metabolic cooperation. They could also be used to inhibit cell growth by blocking the exchange of metabolites between cells. This could be a new strategy to combat fungal pathogens or tumour cells.

“ ̽��ֱ��cell-cell cooperation we uncovered plays a significant role in allowing yeast to help us to produce our food, beer and wine,” says first author Kate Campbell.

“It may also be crucial for all eukaryotic life, including animals, plants and fungi.”

Yeast metabolism has been exploited for thousands of years by mankind for brewing and baking. Yeast metabolizes sugar and secretes a wide array of small molecules during their life cycle, from alcohols and carbon dioxide to antioxidants and amino acids. Although much research has shown yeast to be a robust metabolic work-horse, only more recently has it become clear that these single-cellular organisms assemble in communities, in which individual cells may play a specialised function.

For the new study funded by the Wellcome Trust and European Research Council, researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the Francis Crick Institute found cells to be highly efficient at exchanging some of their essential building blocks (amino acids and nucleobases, such as the A, T, G and C constituents of DNA) in what they call metabolic cooperation. However, they do not do so with every kind of yeast cell: they share nutrients with cells descendant from the same ancestor, but not with other cells from the same species when they originate from another community.

Using a synthetic biology approach, the team led by Dr Markus Ralser at the Department of Biochemistry started with a metabolically competent yeast mother cell, genetically manipulated so that its daughters progressively loose essential metabolic genes. They used it to grow a heterogeneous population of yeast with multiple generations, in which individual cells are deficient for various nutrients.

Campbell then tested whether cells lacking a metabolic gene can survive by sharing nutrients with their family members. When living within their community setting, these cells could continue to grow and survive. This meant that cells were being kept alive by neighbouring cells, which still had their metabolic activity intact, providing them with a much needed nutrient supply. Eventually, the colony established a composition where the majority of cells did help each other out. When cells of the same species but derived from another community were introduced, social interactions did not establish and the foreign cells died from starvation.

When the successful community was compared to other yeast strains, which had no metabolic deficiencies, the researchers found no pronounced differences in how both communities grew and produced biomass. This is implies that sharing was so efficient that any disadvantage was cancelled out.

̽��ֱ��implications of these results may therefore be substantial for industries in which yeast are used to produce biomolecules of interest. This includes biofuels, vaccines and food supplements. ̽��ֱ��research might also help to develop therapeutic strategies against pathogenic fungi, such as the yeast Candida albicans, which form cooperative communities to overcome our immune system.

Reference

Kate Campbell, Jakob Vowinckel, Michael Muelleder, Silke Malmsheimer, Nicola Lawrence, Enrica Calvani, Leonor Miller-Fleming, Mohammad T. Alam, Stefan Christen, Markus A. Keller, and Markus Ralser

Self-establishing communities enable cooperative metabolite exchange in a eukaryote eLife 2015, https://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.09943

Baker’s yeast cells living together in communities help feed each other, but leave incomers from the same species to die from starvation, according to new research from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

̽��ֱ��cell-cell cooperation we uncovered plays a significant role in allowing yeast to help us to produce our food, beer and wine

Kate Campbell

Metabolic cooperation in a social Baker’s yeast community. Pictured is a two-day old yeast community that grows as a colony. Different colours indicate cells producing and consuming different metabolites and nutrients.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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New database for vital model organism launched

gm349 — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:16:10 +0000

A new database promises to be an invaluable resource to scientists who use a unique single-celled fungus to study human diseases.

̽��ֱ��new database for the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, called PomBase, was launched today by a consortium of researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), and ̽��ֱ�� College London (UCL).

Fission yeast is a single-celled fungus (yeast). Because their cells function much like our own, and it is an important model for studying cellular processes frequently associated with heritable diseases and cancers.

Scientists have already discovered that fission yeast has equivalents of many human genes which are known causes of rare genetic diseases and syndromes (including Batten', Bloom's, Birt-Hogg-Dube, Liddle, Lowe, Niemann-Pick). Additionally, fission yeast have counterparts of human genes implicated in diseases with multiple causes, to include many cancers, deafness, neurological diseases, heart disease, Parkinson's, and anaemia.

Biologists today are very dependent on computer databases that catalogue the functions of the genes of the organisms they study and give access to other supporting information. ̽��ֱ��PomBase website will therefore prove to be an important tool for researchers studying fission yeast.

Its launch is the first stage of a 5-year project funded by the Wellcome Trust to provide a model organism database that allows researchers around the world to participate directly in the curation process in addition to using automated procedures based on the genetic blueprint of the fission yeast. ̽��ֱ��project uses Ensembl software for genome browsing, which is already used to present data for many other important experimental species. Novel tools and resources generated by this project will also be available to researchers working on other species, including human pathogens, to create similar databases.

Steve Oliver, Professor of Systems Biology & Biochemistry, who is spearheading the initiative, commented: "Organism specific database projects frequently have limited resources, and large backlogs of uncurated literature. An important novel component of this project is the construction of intuitive tools to allow the research community to involve itself in database curation, and ensure that the scientific information published in their papers is visible to the entire biological research community. These tools can also be shared with other groups and implemented for their organism of interest.”

Valerie Wood, PomBase Manager and co-investigator, said: "PomBase is not only establishing a database for this important model, it is also adapting the EBI's Ensembl Genomes platform and constructing tools to allow the research community to curate their own publications. ̽��ֱ��PomBase protocols will enable other research communities to establish and sustain similar databases for other experimental organisms. We have already identified counterparts for over 300 human disease genes in PomBase and many of these are being studied to elucidate the cellular basis of a diverse range of diseases.”

Jurg Bahler, fission yeast researcher and PomBase co-investigator from UCL, added: “Many basic cellular processes are conserved between yeast and humans, and PomBase will used extensively by biological and biomedical researchers world-wide to study mechanisms involved in cell growth and division.”

Paul Kersey, PomBase co-investigator from EBI, said: “PomBase has adapted the EBI's Ensembl platform to provide a multi-faceted resource dedicated to the needs of fission yeast researchers. These developments will enable other research communities to establish and sustain similar databases for their favourite experimental organisms.”

̽��ֱ��community curation initiative for PomBase will be launched in Spring 2012. ̽��ֱ��database can be found at: www.pombase.org

̽��ֱ��database, PomBase, important new tool for scientists researching fission yeast.

An important novel component of this project is the construction of intuitive tools to allow the research community to involve itself in database curation, and ensure that the scientific information published in their papers is visible to the entire biological research community.

Steve Oliver, Professor of Systems Biology & Biochemistry, who is spearheading the initiative

Image UCL

Pombe

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