Humanized Yeast: Scientists Create Yeast With Important Human Genes

posted by hubie on Saturday August 13 2022, @01:05AM

from the yeasts-for-making-strong-beers dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Delft University of Technology scientists have created baker's yeast with human muscle genes:

Human muscle genes were successfully inserted into the DNA of baker’s yeast by biotechnologist Pascale Daran-Lapujade and her team at Delft University of Technology. For the first time, scientists have effectively inserted a crucial human characteristic into a yeast cell. Their research was recently published in the journal Cell Reports.
Daran-Lapujade’s lab introduced a characteristic to yeast cells that is regulated by a collection of 10 genes that humans cannot live without; they carry the blueprint for a process known as a metabolic pathway, which breaks down sugar to gather energy and produce cellular building blocks within muscle cells. Because this mechanism is involved in many disorders, including cancer, the modified yeast could be used in medical studies.
“Now that we understand the full process, medical scientists can use this humanized yeast model as a tool for drug screening and cancer research,” Daran-Lapujade says.
[...] “We didn’t just transplant the human genes into yeast, we also removed the corresponding yeast genes and completely replaced them with the human muscle genes”, Daran-Lapujade explains. “You might think that you cannot exchange the yeast version with the human one, because it’s such a specific and tightly regulated process both in human and yeast cells. But it works like a charm!”

[...] This one process is just a small part of the human metabolism; there are many more similar processes between yeast and human cells that could be studied in humanized yeasts. While Daran-Lapujade focuses on the fundamental and technological aspects of engineering yeast and thus does not plan to study applications of the humanized yeast herself, she hopes to collaborate with other scientists who are interested in using the tool.
“This is just the starting point,” she says, “we can humanize yeast further and step by step build up a more complex human environment in yeast.”

In the "you can't make this stuff up" category, they collaborated on this yeast project with one Professor Barbara Bakker (Dutch for "baker"). [hubie]

Reference: “Full humanization of the glycolytic pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae” by Francine J. Boonekamp, Ewout Knibbe, Marcel A. Vieira-Lara, et al., 28 June 2022, Cell Reports. DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2022.111010

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