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Cell biology

High-tech yeast ageing

Nature volume 486, pages 37–38 (2012)Cite this article

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A method commonly employed to study replicative ageing in yeast is laborious and slow. The use of miniaturized culture chambers opens the door for automated molecular analyses of individual cells during ageing.

Similarly to many cells in our body, the cells of budding yeast cannot replicate indefinitely. On division, a yeast cell gives rise to a mother cell and a 'fresh' daughter cell. The mother cell can produce, on average, only about 25 daughters before it dies. A test that measures the replicative lifespan of yeast cells has become a popular way to study ageing processes, and researchers have used it to identify genes and pathways that were later confirmed to have roles in longevity in animals1,2,3,4. However, such an assay is labour intensive and cannot be implemented in a high-throughput fashion5. Two studies, one by Lee et al.6 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and another by Xie et al.7 in Aging Cell, offer modified versions of the assay that are amenable to automation and that allow the study of ageing processes in yeast cells to be made in unprecedented detail. The techniques use tiny chambers to retain mother cells and wash away daughters, coupled to powerful microscopes capable of time-lapse photography.

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Figure 1: Watching how cells age.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Michael Polymenis is in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77845, USA.,

    Michael Polymenis

  2. Brian K. Kennedy is at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Novato, California 94945, USA, and at the Aging Research Institute, Guangdong Medical College, Dongguan, China.,

    Brian K. Kennedy

Authors
  1. Michael Polymenis
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  2. Brian K. Kennedy
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Correspondence to Michael Polymenis or Brian K. Kennedy.

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Polymenis, M., Kennedy, B. High-tech yeast ageing. Nature 486, 37–38 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/486037a

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