Flexible throughout life by varying numbers of chromosome copies
Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - 06:30
in Biology & Nature
Baker's yeast is a popular test organism in biology. Yeasts are able to duplicate single chromosomes reversibly and thereby adapt flexibly to environmental conditions. Scientists from the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg, in collaboration with colleagues from the US Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle, have now systematically studied the genetics of this process, which biologists refer to as aneuploidy. The team's new insights will allow a new medical evaluation of aneuploidy, which is associated with certain diseases when it occurs in multicellular organisms. Their results appear in the scientific journal PNAS.