| Molecular Biology of Unicellular Organisms Group
|
Introduction
The unicellular yeast is the most efficiently used eukaryotic system for the
study of essential cellular functions and mechanisms as well as for studies on
cellular physiology and biochemistry. Advanced methods in classical and
molecular genetics are valuable tools, which coupled with biochemical
techniques greatly facilitate the acquisition of answers to important
biological questions. The DNA sequence of the yeast genome will soon be
known, unravelling for the first time, among other chromosomal properties,
the entire repertoire of genes of this eukaryotic organism. This will provide
an additional tool for studies in this model system, alleviating the need for
sequence analysis. Systematic functional analysis of the new genes will
greatly facilitate the studies on multicellular organisms, since the basic
molecular mechanisms of various housekeeping and conditional cellular
functions studies in yeast are applicable to higher eukaryotes.
Our group is:
a) participating in the European Union projects of yeast genome sequencing and
funcional analysis
b) involved in the molecular analysis of specific gene regulatory pathways in
response to environmental changes; and c) studying components involved in
global mechanisms for transcriptional repression and activation