Aging in the single-celled eukaryote, S. cerevisiae

Abstract

In the last few decades, the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has emerged as a simple and powerful model organism to study aging. Replicative aging and chronological aging are the two major models that have been established in yeast. In this chapter, we review the two aging model systems, focusing on genes and pathways that modulate replicative and chronological aging. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overall understanding of the aging process in the single-celled yeast and a basis bywhich to generate models of molecular mechanisms that may affect aging stem cell populations in adult tissues, as well as the multicellular eukaryotes they inhabit.