Research Perspective|Volume 1, Issue 11|pp 957—960

Surviving in the cold: yeast mutants with extended hibernating lifespan are oxidant sensitive

Lucie Postma^1,², Hans Lehrach¹, Markus Ralser¹

¹Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, 14195 Berlin, Germany
²VU Medical Center Amsterdam, Dept. of Clinical Chemistry, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Received: November 3, 2009Accepted: November 10, 2009Published: December 4, 2009

Copyright: © 2009 Postma et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Metabolic activity generates oxidizing molecules throughout life, but it is still debated if the resulting damage of macromolecules is a causality, or consequence, of the aging process. This problem demands for studying growth- and longevity phenotypes separately. Here, we assayed a complete collection of haploid Saccharomyces cerevisiae knock-out strains for their capacity to endure long periods at low metabolic rates. Deletion of 93 genes, predominantly factors of primary metabolism, allowed yeast to survive for more than 58 months in the cold. The majority of these deletion strains were not resistant against oxidants or reductants, but many were hypersensitive. Hence, survival at low metabolic rates has limiting genetic components, and correlates with stress resistance inversely. Indeed, maintaining the energy consuming anti-oxidative machinery seems to be disadvantageous under coldroom conditions.