Yeast for virus research
Budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe) are two popular model organisms for virus research. They are natural hosts for viruses as they carry their own indige-nous viruses. Both yeasts have been used for studies of plant, animal and human viruses. Many p...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Shared Science Publishers OG
2017-09-01
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| Series: | Microbial Cell |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://microbialcell.com/researcharticles/yeast-for-virus-research/ |
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| Summary: | Budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe) are two popular model organisms for virus research. They are natural hosts for viruses as they carry their own indige-nous viruses. Both yeasts have been used for studies of plant, animal and human viruses. Many positive sense (+) RNA viruses and some DNA viruses replicate with various levels in yeasts, thus allowing study of those viral ac-tivities during viral life cycle. Yeasts are single cell eukaryotic organisms. Hence, many of the fundamental cellular functions such as cell cycle regula-tion or programed cell death are highly conserved from yeasts to higher eu-karyotes. Therefore, they are particularly suited to study the impact of those viral activities on related cellular activities during virus-host interactions. Yeasts present many unique advantages in virus research over high eukary-otes. Yeast cells are easy to maintain in the laboratory with relative short doubling time. They are non-biohazardous, genetically amendable with small genomes that permit genome-wide analysis of virologic and cellular func-tions. In this review, similarities and differences of these two yeasts are described. Studies of virologic activities such as viral translation, viral replica-tion and genome-wide study of virus-cell interactions in yeasts are high-lighted. Impacts of viral proteins on basic cellular functions such as cell cycle regulation and programed cell death are discussed. Potential applications of using yeasts as hosts to carry out functional analysis of small viral genome and to develop high throughput drug screening platform for the discovery of antiviral drugs are presented. |
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| ISSN: | 2311-2638 |