Back to article: Protein aggregation triggers a declining libido in elder yeasts that still have a lust for life
FIGURE 1: The different ages of budding yeast. Young cells (no bud scars – left, small Whi3 puncta – green dots) shmoo in response to pheromone (right). In the absence of a mating partner, young cells escape the pheromone arrest due to Whi3 super-assembly (green star). Their daughters are born naïve and respond to pheromone. Middle age cells behave similarly to young cells but already accumulate an age induced protein deposit enriched in Hsp104 (red dot). Very old cells (many bud scars, left) still have an Hsp104 aggregate, but also display aggregated Whi3. When exposed to low pheromone concentration very old cells keep on dividing while their daughters which do not inherit Whi3 aggregates are still born naïve and shmoo.