Humanized yeast and the study of anti-apoptosis

酵母在生物技术中的应用是一个价值数十亿美元的产业。它们的用途从生产食品（啤酒、葡萄酒、面包）到生产用作药物和添加剂的生物活性蛋白质和复杂分子。与这些用途相关的一个主要问题是，酵母细胞必须暴露于各种导致死亡的环境压力下，从而增加成本或减少最终产品的产量。我们已经确定了一些人类、小鼠和酵母基因，这些基因可以在不同的死亡诱导刺激下赋予抵抗力并防止细胞死亡。我们使用了模拟工业酵母所遇到的压力的刺激物。因此，我们的研究很重要，因为它与许多正在寻求不同方法的行业是一致的，包括增加细胞凋亡抗性，以防止工业细胞死亡。此外，我们的研究是主要关注酵母作为遗传模型的一部分，以揭示真核细胞程序性细胞死亡过程中涉及的基本细胞机制。基因编码的细胞死亡是所有真核生物的基本细胞过程，了解其潜在过程将对发育等各种过程产生广泛的影响。酵母很可能为这一现象提供新的见解，因为我们可以使用不容易适用于许多其他生物的遗传技术。

The use of yeast in biotechnology is a multi-billion dollar industry. Their use ranges from the production of foodstuff (beer, wine, bread) to the production of bioactive proteins and complex molecules that are used as drugs and additives. A major problem associated with these uses is that yeast cells must be exposed to a variety of environmental stresses that lead to death and serve to increase costs or decrease end product production. We have identified a number of human, mouse and yeast genes that can confer resistance and prevent cell death in response to different death inducing stimuli. We have used stimuli that mimic the stresses encountered by industrial yeast. Thus our research is of importance because it is in line with many industries that are seeking different ways, including increasing apoptosis resistance, to prevent industrial cell death. In addition, our research is part of a major focus on using yeast as a genetic model to uncover the basic cellular machinery involved in regulating the process of programmed cell death in eukaryotic cells. Genetically encoded cell death is a basic cellular process seen in all eukaryotes and understanding its underlying processes will have wide ranging implications for a variety of processes such as development. Yeast is likely to give new insights into this phenomenon since we can use genetic techniques that are not easily applicable to many other organisms.