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Schizosaccharomyces pombe

 

 
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Schizosaccharomyces pombe
 
 
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Schizosaccharomyces pombe, also called "fission yeast", is a species
Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring....
 of yeast
Yeast

Yeasts are eukaryote microorganisms classified in the Kingdom fungus, with about 1,500 species currently described; they dominate fungal diversity in the oceans....
. It is used as a model organism
Model organism

A model organism is a species that is extensively studied to understand particular biology phenomena, with the expectation that discoveries made in the organism model will provide insight into the workings of other organisms....
 in molecular
Molecular biology

Molecular biology is the study of biology at a molecule level. The field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry....
 and cell biology
Cell biology

Cell biology is an list of academic disciplines that studies cell s ? their physiology properties, their structure, the organelles they contain, interactions with their environment, their cell cycle, cell division and apoptosis....
. It is a unicellular eukaryote
Eukaryote

Animals, plants, fungus, and protists are eukaryotes , organisms whose Cell are organized into complex structures enclosed within Cell membrane....
, whose cells
Cell (biology)

The cell is the structural and functional unit of all known Life organisms. It is the smallest unit of an organism that is classified as living, and is often called the building bricks of life....
 are rod-shaped. Cells typically measure 3 to 4 micrometre
Micrometre

A micrometre or micron is one Micro- of a metre, or equivalently one thousandth of a millimetre. It is also commonly known as a micron....
s in diameter and 7 to 14 micrometres in length. Its genome
Genome

In classical genetics, the genome of a diploid organism including eukarya refers to a full set of chromosomes or genes in a gamete; thereby, a regular somatic cell contains two full sets of genomes....
, which is approximately 14.1 million base pairs, is estimated to contain 4,970 genes
Gênes

G?nes is the name of a d?partement in France of the First French Empire in present Italy. It was named after the city Genoa. It was formed in 1805, when Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the Republic of Genoa....
, possibly the fewest in any eukaryote.

These cells maintain their shape by growing exclusively through the cell tips and divide by medial fission
Binary fission

Binary fission is the form of asexual reproduction and cell division used by prokaryotic and some eukaryotic organisms . This process results in the reproduction of a living prokaryotic cell by division into two parts which each have the potential to grow to the size of the original cell....
 to produce two daughter cells of equal sizes, which makes them a powerful tool in cell cycle
Cell cycle

The cell cycle, or cell-division cycle, is the series of events that take place in a cell leading to its division and duplication . In cells without a nucleus , the cell cycle occurs via a process termed binary fission....
 research.

Fission yeast was isolated in 1893 by Lindner from East African millet
Millet

The millets are a group of small-seeded species of cereal Crop or grains, widely grown around the world for food and fodder. They do not form a scientific classification group, but rather a functional or agronomic one....
 beer
Beer

Beer is the world's oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and Fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal?the most common of which is malted barley, although wheat, maize , and rice are widely used....
.






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Schizosaccharomyces pombe, also called "fission yeast", is a species
Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring....
 of yeast
Yeast

Yeasts are eukaryote microorganisms classified in the Kingdom fungus, with about 1,500 species currently described; they dominate fungal diversity in the oceans....
. It is used as a model organism
Model organism

A model organism is a species that is extensively studied to understand particular biology phenomena, with the expectation that discoveries made in the organism model will provide insight into the workings of other organisms....
 in molecular
Molecular biology

Molecular biology is the study of biology at a molecule level. The field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry....
 and cell biology
Cell biology

Cell biology is an list of academic disciplines that studies cell s ? their physiology properties, their structure, the organelles they contain, interactions with their environment, their cell cycle, cell division and apoptosis....
. It is a unicellular eukaryote
Eukaryote

Animals, plants, fungus, and protists are eukaryotes , organisms whose Cell are organized into complex structures enclosed within Cell membrane....
, whose cells
Cell (biology)

The cell is the structural and functional unit of all known Life organisms. It is the smallest unit of an organism that is classified as living, and is often called the building bricks of life....
 are rod-shaped. Cells typically measure 3 to 4 micrometre
Micrometre

A micrometre or micron is one Micro- of a metre, or equivalently one thousandth of a millimetre. It is also commonly known as a micron....
s in diameter and 7 to 14 micrometres in length. Its genome
Genome

In classical genetics, the genome of a diploid organism including eukarya refers to a full set of chromosomes or genes in a gamete; thereby, a regular somatic cell contains two full sets of genomes....
, which is approximately 14.1 million base pairs, is estimated to contain 4,970 genes
Gênes

G?nes is the name of a d?partement in France of the First French Empire in present Italy. It was named after the city Genoa. It was formed in 1805, when Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the Republic of Genoa....
, possibly the fewest in any eukaryote.

These cells maintain their shape by growing exclusively through the cell tips and divide by medial fission
Binary fission

Binary fission is the form of asexual reproduction and cell division used by prokaryotic and some eukaryotic organisms . This process results in the reproduction of a living prokaryotic cell by division into two parts which each have the potential to grow to the size of the original cell....
 to produce two daughter cells of equal sizes, which makes them a powerful tool in cell cycle
Cell cycle

The cell cycle, or cell-division cycle, is the series of events that take place in a cell leading to its division and duplication . In cells without a nucleus , the cell cycle occurs via a process termed binary fission....
 research.

Fission yeast was isolated in 1893 by Lindner from East African millet
Millet

The millets are a group of small-seeded species of cereal Crop or grains, widely grown around the world for food and fodder. They do not form a scientific classification group, but rather a functional or agronomic one....
 beer
Beer

Beer is the world's oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and Fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal?the most common of which is malted barley, although wheat, maize , and rice are widely used....
. The species name is derived from the Swahili
Swahili language

Swahili is the first language of the Swahili people , who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands....
 word for beer (Pombe). It was first developed as an experimental model in the 1950s: by Urs Leupold for studying genetics, and by Murdoch Mitchison
Murdoch Mitchison

John Murdoch Mitchison Fellow of the Royal Society , known as Murdoch Mitchison, is a United Kingdom zoology....
 for studying the cell cycle.

The fission yeast researcher Paul Nurse
Paul Nurse

Sir Paul Maxime Nurse, Royal Society is a United Kingdom biochemist. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Leland H....
 successfully merged the independent schools of fission yeast genetics and cell cycle research. Together with Lee Hartwell and Tim Hunt
Tim Hunt

Sir Richard Timothy "Tim" Hunt, Fellow of the Royal Society is an England biochemist....
, Nurse won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded once a year by the Swedish Karolinska Institutet. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in Nobel Prize in Physics, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and Physiology or Medic...
 for their work on cell cycle regulation.

The sequence of the S. pombe genome
Genome

In classical genetics, the genome of a diploid organism including eukarya refers to a full set of chromosomes or genes in a gamete; thereby, a regular somatic cell contains two full sets of genomes....
 was published in 2002, by a consortium led by the Sanger Institute
Sanger Institute

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is "one of the world's leading genomics centres". The Institute is named after double Nobel Laureate, biochemist, Frederick Sanger....
, becoming the sixth model eukaryotic organism whose genome
Genome

In classical genetics, the genome of a diploid organism including eukarya refers to a full set of chromosomes or genes in a gamete; thereby, a regular somatic cell contains two full sets of genomes....
 has been fully sequenced. This has fully unlocked the power of this organism, with many genes homologous to human disease genes being identified.

In 2006, sub-cellular localization of all the proteins in S. pombe was published using green fluorescent protein
Green fluorescent protein

The green fluorescent protein is composed of 238 amino acids , originally isolated from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria that fluorescence green when exposed to blue light....
 as a molecular tag.

S. pombe has also become an important organism in studying the cellular responses to DNA damage and the process of DNA replication
DNA replication

DNA replication, the basis for heredity, is a fundamental process occurring in all living organisms to copy their DNA. This process is "semiconservative replication" in that each strand of the original double-stranded DNA molecule serves as template for the reproduction of the complementary strand....
.

Comparison with budding yeast or Schizosaccharomyces cerevisiae
Schizosaccharomyces cerevisiae

Schizosaccharomyces is a genus of binary fission yeasts. The yeast species Schizosaccharomyces pombe and S. cerevisiae are both well studied; these two species diverged approximately 300 to 600 million years before present, and are significant tools in the study of DNA damage and repair mechanisms....

The yeast species S. pombe and S. cerevisiae are both extensively studied; these two species diverged approximately 300 to 600 million years before present, and are significant tools in molecular and cellular biology. Some of the technical discriminants between these two species are:

  • S. cerevisiae has approximately 5600 open reading frame
    Open reading frame

    An open reading frame is a portion of an organism's genome which contains a sequence of base pair that could potentially translation a protein....
    s; S. pombe has approximately 4970 open reading frames.
  • S. cerevisiae has 16 chromosome
    Chromosome

    A chromosome is an organized structure of DNA and protein that is found in Cell . A chromosome is a single piece of DNA that contains many genes, regulatory sequence and other genetic sequence....
    s, S. pombe has 3.
  • S. cerevisiae is often diploid while S. pombe is usually haploid.
  • S. cerevisiae is in the G1 phase of the cell cycle for an extended period (consequently, G1-S transition is tightly controlled) while S. pombe remains in the G2 phase of the cell cycle for an extended period (consequently, G2-M transition is under tight control).
  • Both species share genes with higher eukaryotes that they do not share with each other. S. pombe has heterochromatin and RNAi machinery
    RNAI

    RNAI is a non-coding RNA that is an antisense repressor of the replication of some E. coli plasmids, including ColE1. Plasmid replication is usually initiated by RNAII, which acts as a primer by binding to its template DNA....
     genes like those in vertebrates, while these are missing from S. cerevisiae. Conversely, S. cerevisiae has well developed peroxisomes, while Sch. pombe does not.
  • S. cerevisiae has small point centromere of about 100 bp, and sequence-defined replication origins of about the same size. Conversely, S. pombe has large, repetitive centromeres (40-100 kb) more similar to mammalian centromeres, and degenerate replication origins of at least 1kb.


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