Question

what is the relevance of saccharomyces cerevisiae and Arabidopsis thaliana in biotechnology experiments?

Answer 1

Arabidopsis thaliana, a small flowering plant, is a member of the Brassicaceae family. Arabidopsis lacks major agronomic significance, but offers important advantages for basic research in genetics and molecular biology making it a widely used model organism in plant biology.

Relevance of Arabidopsis thaliana to biotechnology experiments:

• It has small genome (125 Mb) that has been completely sequenced in 2000. Extensive genetic and physical maps of all 5 chromosomes are available.
• Arabidopsis has a comparatively small genome, thereby simplifying and facilitating genetic analysis.
• It lacks the repeated, less-informative DNA sequences that complicate genome analysis.
• A rapid life cycle or short generation time (about 6 weeks from germination to mature seed).
• It grows well under laboratory conditions, on shelves at room temperature, with limited amounts of light.
• It offers prolific seed production and easy cultivation in restricted space. It reproduces by self-pollination (cross-pollination can be easily accomplished). It generates approximately 10000–30000 seeds which allows extensive genetic experiments
• Efficient transformation methods utilizing Agrobacterium tumefaciens.
• A large number of mutant lines and genomic resources are available. Large collections of T-DNA-insertion and transposon-mobilized lines have been generated and are available for forward and reverse genetic studies.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae or Baker’s or budding yeast is one of the simplest eukaryotic organisms that have many essential cellular processes similar to humans. Therefore, it is an important organism to study the basic molecular processes in humans.

Relevance of Saccharomyces cerevisiae to biotechnology experiments:

Saccharomyces cerevisiae has long been a popular model organism for biotechnology research worldwide due largely to its unique physiology and associated key roles in many food fermentations and other industrial processes. It is easy to manipulate in the lab and can cope with a wide range of environmental conditions. The controls of cell division are similar to the processes in human cells.

• It plays a major role in applied research due to its outstanding capacity to produce ethanol and carbon dioxide from sugars with high productivity, titer, and yield. Baking, wine making, brewing, and production of bioethanol constitute the majority of the S. cerevisiae biotechnological industry.
• S. cerevisiae is relatively tolerant to low pH values and high sugar and ethanol concentrations, i.e., properties which lower the risk of contamination in industrial fermentation.
• It is fairly resistant to inhibitors present in biomass hydrolysates and is able to grow anaerobically.
• It is also used as a host organism for pharmaceutical protein production.
• S. cerevisiae was the first eukaryotic organism whose complete genomic sequence was determined and several databases are available to provide the enormous amount of information concerning S. cerevisiae genes, open reading frames, gene products, genomewide microarray studies and networks of protein interactors
• It offers efficient transformation with many specialized expression vectors, including episomal ones, reporter genes, immunotags, and genetically selectable markers.
• It provides the extraordinarily high efficiency of homologous recombination which facilitated targeted manipulations within chromosomes.
• It is classified as GRAS (generally regarded as safe) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
• Due to its cutting-edge role, it is not surprising that the yeast S. cerevisiae has become a well-established eukaryotic model organism to study fundamental biological processes such as aging, mRNA transport, the cell cycle etc.
• S. cerevisiae also serves as a model organism for studying human diseases such as cancer and has been used as a tool for drug research, studying prions, basic and applied virus research, and ecotoxicology.