Chromosome-condensed G1 phase yeast cells are tolerant to desiccation stress

Authors:

Zhaojie Zhang1 and Gracie R. Zhang2

doi: 10.15698/mic2022.02.770
Volume 9, pp. 42 to 51, published 26/11/2021.

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Affiliations:

1 Department of Zoology and Physiology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, 82071, USA.

2 Laramie High School, 1710 Boulder Dr. Laramie, WY 82070, USA.

Keywords: 

aging, cell cycle, chromosome condensation, desiccation tolerance, Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Corresponding Author(s):

Dr. Zhaojie Zhang, Department of Zoology and Physiology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA; Tel: 307-766-3038; zzhang@uwyo.edu

Conflict of interest statement:

The authors declare no conflict of interests.

Please cite this article as:

Zhaojie Zhang and Gracie R. Zhang (2021). Chromosome-condensed G1 phase yeast cells are tol-erant to desiccation stress. Microbial Cell 9(2): 42-51. doi: 10.15698/mic2022.02.770

© 2021 Zhang and Zhang. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.

Abstract:

The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is capable of surviving extreme water loss for a long time. However, less is known about the mechanism of its desiccation tolerance. In this study, we revealed that in an exponential culture, all desiccation tolerant yeast cells were in G1 phase and had condensed chromosomes. These cells share certain features of stationary G0 cells, such as low metabolic level. They were also replicatively young, compared to the desiccation sensitive G1 cells. A similar percentage of chromosome-condensed cells were observed in stationary phase but the condensation level was much higher than that of the log-phase cells. These chromosome-condensed stationary cells were also tolerant to desiccation. However, the majority of the desiccation tolerant cells in stationary phase do not have condensed chromosomes. We speculate that the log-phase cells with condensed chromosome might be a unique feature developed through evolution to survive unpredicted sudden changes of the environment.