Budding Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) as a Model System in Study of Viral Infections

Budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) is another simple, monocellular eukaryotic organism. There are more studies on budding yeast than fission yeast. It has also been used successfully as an experimental model to study the function and expression of viral genes related to various human diseases. Therefore, either fission yeast or budding yeast is a good model for eukaryotic studies and complement to each other in many ways. However, there are few differences between fission yeast and budding yeast. For example, ample evidence has been demonstrated that cell cycle control machinery in fission  yeast is very similar to mammalian cellular machinery, whereas it seems that budding yeast has somewhat different regulatory mechanism in controlling mitosis. Thus, careful consideration has to be taken before choosing a model organism in studying genes of your interest.

Table 3.  List of papers that uses budding yeast as a host to study viral gene expressions.

Name of the Virus  Number of References*
Human viruses 310
Human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) 77
Human papillovirus (HPV) 24
Human herpes viruses (HSV) 35
Human cytomalloviruses (CMV) 7
Human hepatitis B virus (HBV) 39
Human hepatitis C virus (HCV) 18
Adenoviruses 25
Polyomaviruses 46
Simian virus 40 (SV40) 37
Plant viruses 75
Other viruses 526
All viruses combined  842
*, as of January, 2003  

Click here to view PubMed literature on studies of viral genes in the fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe)

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