Current methods for Saccharomyces cerevisiae. I. Growth

Interest in the study of yeast biology has increased dramatically in the past few years. Since these organisms are eukaryotic, some phenomena observed in yeast may provide a useful model for similar phenomena in multicellular organisms. Yeast has several advantages as an experimental organism and many methods used for bacteria can be adapted to them. Yeast is simple to grow, cultures are easily maintained, and classical and molecular genetic techniques can be used. The ability to approach problems genetically and biochemically has lead to substantive progess with this group of organisms in areas such as cell biology (1) and gene expression (2). This review is intended to introduce investigators to practical techniques for the growth and radioactive labeling of yeast, primarily of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. For genetic techniques, readers are referred to a recent laboratory manual (3) and reviews (4,5).