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Aging yeast gain a competitive advantage on non‐optimal carbon sources

Animals, plants and fungi undergo an aging process with remarkable physiological and molecular similarities, suggesting that aging has long been a fact of life for eukaryotes and one to which our unicellular ancestors were subject. Key biochemical pathways that impact longevity evolved prior to mult...

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Autores principales: Frenk, Stephen, Pizza, Grazia, Walker, Rachael V., Houseley, Jonathan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5418195/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28247585
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/acel.12582
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author Frenk, Stephen
Pizza, Grazia
Walker, Rachael V.
Houseley, Jonathan
author_facet Frenk, Stephen
Pizza, Grazia
Walker, Rachael V.
Houseley, Jonathan
author_sort Frenk, Stephen
collection PubMed
description Animals, plants and fungi undergo an aging process with remarkable physiological and molecular similarities, suggesting that aging has long been a fact of life for eukaryotes and one to which our unicellular ancestors were subject. Key biochemical pathways that impact longevity evolved prior to multicellularity, and the interactions between these pathways and the aging process therefore emerged in ancient single‐celled eukaryotes. Nevertheless, we do not fully understand how aging impacts the fitness of unicellular organisms, and whether such cells gain a benefit from modulating rather than simply suppressing the aging process. We hypothesized that age‐related loss of fitness in single‐celled eukaryotes may be counterbalanced, partly or wholly, by a transition from a specialist to a generalist life‐history strategy that enhances adaptability to other environments. We tested this hypothesis in budding yeast using competition assays and found that while young cells are more successful in glucose, highly aged cells outcompete young cells on other carbon sources such as galactose. This occurs because aged yeast divide faster than young cells in galactose, reversing the normal association between age and fitness. The impact of aging on single‐celled organisms is therefore complex and may be regulated in ways that anticipate changing nutrient availability. We propose that pathways connecting nutrient availability with aging arose in unicellular eukaryotes to capitalize on age‐linked diversity in growth strategy and that individual cells in higher eukaryotes may similarly diversify during aging to the detriment of the organism as a whole.
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spelling pubmed-54181952017-06-01 Aging yeast gain a competitive advantage on non‐optimal carbon sources Frenk, Stephen Pizza, Grazia Walker, Rachael V. Houseley, Jonathan Aging Cell Short Takes Animals, plants and fungi undergo an aging process with remarkable physiological and molecular similarities, suggesting that aging has long been a fact of life for eukaryotes and one to which our unicellular ancestors were subject. Key biochemical pathways that impact longevity evolved prior to multicellularity, and the interactions between these pathways and the aging process therefore emerged in ancient single‐celled eukaryotes. Nevertheless, we do not fully understand how aging impacts the fitness of unicellular organisms, and whether such cells gain a benefit from modulating rather than simply suppressing the aging process. We hypothesized that age‐related loss of fitness in single‐celled eukaryotes may be counterbalanced, partly or wholly, by a transition from a specialist to a generalist life‐history strategy that enhances adaptability to other environments. We tested this hypothesis in budding yeast using competition assays and found that while young cells are more successful in glucose, highly aged cells outcompete young cells on other carbon sources such as galactose. This occurs because aged yeast divide faster than young cells in galactose, reversing the normal association between age and fitness. The impact of aging on single‐celled organisms is therefore complex and may be regulated in ways that anticipate changing nutrient availability. We propose that pathways connecting nutrient availability with aging arose in unicellular eukaryotes to capitalize on age‐linked diversity in growth strategy and that individual cells in higher eukaryotes may similarly diversify during aging to the detriment of the organism as a whole. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2017-03-01 2017-06 /pmc/articles/PMC5418195/ /pubmed/28247585 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/acel.12582 Text en © 2017 The Authors. Aging Cell published by the Anatomical Society and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Short Takes
Frenk, Stephen
Pizza, Grazia
Walker, Rachael V.
Houseley, Jonathan
Aging yeast gain a competitive advantage on non‐optimal carbon sources
title Aging yeast gain a competitive advantage on non‐optimal carbon sources
title_full Aging yeast gain a competitive advantage on non‐optimal carbon sources
title_fullStr Aging yeast gain a competitive advantage on non‐optimal carbon sources
title_full_unstemmed Aging yeast gain a competitive advantage on non‐optimal carbon sources
title_short Aging yeast gain a competitive advantage on non‐optimal carbon sources
title_sort aging yeast gain a competitive advantage on non‐optimal carbon sources
topic Short Takes
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5418195/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28247585
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/acel.12582
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