Schizosaccharomyces pombe, also called "fission yeast," is a species of yeast. It is used as a model organism in molecular and cell biology. It is a unicellular eukaryote, whose cells are rod-shaped. Cells typically measure 2 to 3 micrometres in diameter and 7 to 14 micrometres in length. Scientific classification or biological classification is how biologists group and categorize extinct and living species of organisms. ... Divisions Chytridiomycota Zygomycota Ascomycota Basidiomycota The Fungi (singular: fungus) are a large group of organisms ranked as a kingdom within the Domain Eukaryota. ... Classes Archaeascomycetes Discomycetes Euascomycetes Hemiascomycetes Lecanoromycetes Neolectomycetes Pezizomycotina Pneumocystidomycetes Saccharomycotina Schizosaccharomycetes Taphrinomycetes Mitosporic Ascomycota Members of the Division Ascomycota are known as the Sac Fungi and are fungi that produce spores in a distinctive type of microscopic sporangium called an ascus (Greek for a bag or wineskin). This monophyletic grouping... In biology, binomial nomenclature is the formal method of naming species. ... In biology, a species is the basic unit of biodiversity. ... Yeasts constitute a group of single-celled (unicellular) fungi, a few species of which are commonly used to leaven bread, ferment alcoholic beverages, and even drive experimental fuel cells. ... A model organism is a species that is extensively studied to understand particular biological phenomena, with the expectation that discoveries made in the model organism will provide insight into the workings of other organisms. ... Molecular biology is the study of biology at a molecular level. ... Cell biology (also called cellular biology or cytology, from the Greek kytos, container) is an academic discipline which studies cells. ... Kingdoms Animalia - Animals Fungi Plantae - Plants Protista A eukaryote (also spelled eucaryote) is an organism with complex cells, in which the genetic material is organized into membrane-bound nuclei. ... Cells in culture, stained for keratin (red) and DNA (green) The cell is the structural and functional unit of all living organisms, and are sometimes called the building blocks of life. ...

These cells maintain their shape by growing exclusively through the cell tips and divide by medial fission to produce two daughter cells of equal sizes, which makes them a powerful tool in cell cycle research. Such research is critical as it is important to understand how cells grow and differentiate as well as how non-controlled growth results in cancerous cells. In general fission is a splitting or breaking up into parts. ... The cell cycle, or cell division cycle, is the cycle of events in a eukaryotic cell from one cell division to the next. ...

Fission yeast was isolated in 1893 by Lindner from East African millet beer. The species name is derived from the Swahili word for beer (Pombe). It was first developed as an experimental model for studying the cell cycle by Murdoch Mitchison in the 1950s. Beer, generally, is an alcoholic beverage produced through the fermentation of sugars suspended in an aqueous medium, and which is not distilled after fermentation. ... Swahili (also called Kiswahili; see Kiswahili for a discussion of the nomenclature) is an agglutinative Bantu language widely spoken in East Africa. ... John Murdoch Mitchison FRS (born 1922), known as Murdoch Mitchison, is a British zoologist. ...

The fission yeast researcher Paul Nurse, together with Lee Hartwell and Tim Hunt, won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for their work on cell cycle regulation. Sir Paul M. Nurse (b. ... Dr. Richard Timothy (Tim) Hunt (b. ... List of Nobel Prize laureates in Physiology or Medicine from 1901 to the present day. ...

The sequence of the S.pombe genome was published in 2002, by a consortium led by the Sanger Institute, becoming the sixth model eukaryotic organism whose genome has been fully sequenced. This has fully unlocked the power of this organism, with many genes homologous to human disease genes, including diabetes and cyctic fibrosis, being identified. In biology the genome of an organism is the whole hereditary information of an organism that is encoded in the DNA (or, for some viruses, RNA). ... The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (formally the Sanger Centre) is a genome research centre in Cambridgeshire, England. ... In biology the genome of an organism is the whole hereditary information of an organism that is encoded in the DNA (or, for some viruses, RNA). ... For the sense of sequencing used in electronic music, see the music sequencer article. ... This article is about the disease that features high blood sugar. ...

S.pombe has also proved to be an important organisim for unlocking the secrets of the cell cycle response to DNA damage and DNA replication. DNA damage resulting in multiple broken chromosomes DNA repair is a process constantly operating in each cell of a living being; it is essential to survival because it protects the genome from damage. ... DNA replication. ...

Comparison with budding yeast or S. cerevisiae

• S.c. has ~ 5600 orfs, Sch. pombe has ~ 4800 orfs
• S.c. has 16 chromosomes, Sch. pombe has 3
• S.c. is usually diploid while Sch.pombe is usually haploid

Diploid (meaning double in Greek) cells have two copies (homologs) of each chromosome (both sex- and non-sex determining chromosomes), usually one from the mother and one from the father. ... Haploid (meaning simple in Greek) cells have only one copy of each chromosome. ...

External links

• Pombeweb
• Pombe Gene Database
• Pombe Genome at the Sanger Centre
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