Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark (FBL) is published by IMR Press from Volume 26 Issue 5 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.
Oxidative stress and neurodegeneration: the yeast model system
In this chapter we are treating yeast cells as a model for oxidative stress response and the consequences of oxidative stress which are one cause for a number of human diseases, including neurodegenerative diseases, which form the main part of this paper. All such model building depends on orthologous relations between highly conserved yeast and human genes, which are easily recognized by sequence comparisons, but much more difficult to prove functionally. Previously we have treated Friedreich’s ataxia, while presently we are describing in detail the neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses, among them Batten disease. A general overview is given how yeast can aid current research in three of the most devastating and at the same time quantitatively most important neurodegenerative diseases of old age: Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s disease. In the ensuing part of the chapter, we describe yeast as model for metabolic regulation and hence as a model for inborn errors of metabolism that are in some instances very faithfully mirrored by introducing the same point mutations into yeast cells which are known from patients.