Our Cousins the Yeast

Recently a group of scientists at the University of Texas published a very interesting paper, Systematic humanization of yeast genes reveals conserved functions and genetic modularity, in Science Magazine.  They found that a number of genes from humans could be inserted into yeast and get the same metabolic function.  It seems we have several thousand genes in common with our cousins the yeast.  The research group tried over 400 human genes and about half of them worked when placed in the yeast.  They first had to knock out the yeast genes to allow the human genes to work.  So be more respectful to that bread and beer from now on!.

You can hear an interview with one of the researcher on Science Friday.