Histone modifications as regulators of life and death in Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Authors:Birthe Fahrenkrog
doi: 10.15698/mic2016.01.472
Volume 3, pp. 1 to 13, published 31/12/2015.
Institute of Molecular Biology and Medicine, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Rue Profs. Jeener et Brachet 12; 6041 Charleroi, Belgium.
Keywords:
apoptosis, autophagy, epigenetics, histone modification, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, yeast.
Corresponding Author(s):
Conflict of interest statement:
The author declares no conflict of interest.
Please cite this article as:
Birthe Fahrenkrog (2015). Histone modifications as regulators of life and death in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Microbial Cell 3(1): 1-13. doi: 10.15698/mic2016.01.472
© 2015 Fahrenkrog. 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:
Apoptosis or programmed cell death is an integrated, genetically controlled suicide program that not only regulates tissue homeostasis of multicellular organisms, but also the fate of damaged and aged cells of lower eukaryotes, such as the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Recent years have revealed key apoptosis regulatory proteins in yeast that play similar roles in mammalian cells. Apoptosis is a process largely defined by characteristic structural rearrangements in the dying cell that include chromatin condensation and DNA fragmentation. The mechanism by which chromosomes restructure during apoptosis is still poorly understood, but it is becoming increasingly clear that altered epigenetic histone modifications are fundamental parameters that influence the chromatin state and the nuclear rearrangements within apoptotic cells. The present review will highlight recent work on the epigenetic regulation of programmed cell death in budding yeast.