BeerSci: What Beer's Key Ingredient Reveals About Our Own Genomes
The Brewer's Best Friend High-pressure frozen, freeze-factured scanning electron microcraph of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Prof. Dr. Gerhard Wanner, LMU Munich, Faculty of Biology / FlickrThe yeast S. cerevisiae is instrumental in brewing ale. But did you know that it's also instrumental in helping scientists better understand cells? Meet Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the humble brewer's yeast and resident co-deity to BeerSci's brewing endeavors. Humans have been exploiting S. cerevisiae's fermentation prowess for thousands of years. Without it we wouldn't have beer, bread or wine. In addition to its uses in food production, S. cerevisiae is also an amazing tool for molecular and cell biology, one that is helping scientists suss out the rules of how our cells work and gain clues to what happens at the molecular level when things go wrong. Much of what we understand about eukaryotic cellular processes and eukaryotic gene expression, we learned by studying S. cerevisiae. That's because S....