Saccharomyces cerevisiae
From Freepedia
| Saccharomyces cerevisiae | ||||||||||||||
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| Saccharomyces cerevisiae Meyen ex E.C. Hansen |
Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a species of budding yeast. It is perhaps the most relevant yeast for mankind, both for its use since ancient times in baking and brewing, and for being one of the most intensively studied eukaryotic model organisms in molecular and cell biology, much like Escherichia coli as the model prokaryote.
It is useful in studying the cell cycle because it is easy to culture but as a eukaryote, it shares the complex internal cell structure of plants and animals. S. cerevisiae was the first eukaryotic genome that was completely sequenced. The yeast genome database [1] is highly annotated and remains a very important tool for developing basic knowledge about the function and organization of eukaryotic cell genetics and physiology. Another important S. cerevisiae database is maintained by the Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences [2]. Saccharomyces cerevisiae was the first eukaryote to have its genome sequenced (published in 1996). The genome is composed of about 13,000,000 base pairs and 6,275 genes. It is estimated that yeast shares about 23% of its genome with humans.
Other names for the organism are:
- Brewer's yeast (the apostrophe may be missing or after the s), though other species are also used in brewing
- Baker's yeast (the apostrophe may be missing or after the s)
- Budding yeast
This species is also the main source of nutritional yeast and yeast extract.
External links
- Saccharomyces Genome Database
- Munich Information Center for Protein Sequencesabstract of the paper describing the genome
Categories: Fungi | Model organisms | Baking | Beer | Leavening agents
