Fission yeast

As a model system

Fission yeast has become a notable model system to study basic principles of a cell that can be used to understand more complex organisms like mammals and in particular humans. This single cell eukaryote is nonpathogenic and easily grown and manipulated in the lab. Fission yeast contains one of the smallest numbers of genes of a known genome sequence for a eukaryote, and has only three chromosomes in its genome. Many of the genes responsible for cell division and cellular organization in fission yeast cell are also found in the human's genome. Cell cycle regulation and division are crucial for growth and development of any cell. Fission yeast's conserved genes has been heavily studied and the reason for many recent biomedical developments. Fission yeast is also a practical model system to observe cell division because fission yeast's are cylindrically shaped single celled eukaryotes that divide and reproduce by medial fission. This can easily be seen using microscopy. Fission yeast also have an extremely short generation time, 2 to 4 hours, which also makes it an easy model system to observe and grow in the laboratory. Fission yeast's simplicity in genomic structure yet similarities with mammalian genome, ease of ability to manipulate, and ability to be used for drug analysis is why fission yeast is making many contributions to biomedicine and cellular biology research, and a model system for genetic analysis.