Mad Scientists Create Human Bread Yeast in a Lab

The thing is alive!

The human muscle genes were inserted into baker's yeast for the first time by a team of scientists.

Many common disorders, including, among others, cancer, are caused by the same mechanism that the human genes express.

yeast can serve as an excellent tool in a scientist's arsenal if the engineered yeast opens plenty of doors in the fields of drug screening and cancer research. You're not the only one who thinks that putting human genes into baker's yeast sounds strange.

"It seems weird since yeast lives as single cells and humans consist of a substantially more complex system, but the cells operate in a very similar way," said Pascale Daran-Lapujade, the lead author of the new study.

yeast can be easily modified to address fundamental questions because of its simplicity to grow and its genetic accessibility. yeast was used to decipher the cell division cycle.

The research shows that genes can be edited. Daran-Lapujade said that they removed the yeast genes and replaced them with the human muscles genes.

"You might think you can't swap the yeast version with the human one because it's such a tightly regulated process," she said. It works well.

Daran-Lapujade and her colleagues were surprised to find that the human genes in the yeast were very similar to those in human cells.

The team doesn't just want to end there. "We can humanize yeast further and step by step build up a more complex human environment in yeast."

The scientists created yeast with important human genes.

There is more on yeast and how it can be used to make drugs.