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Yeast Can Be Altruistic Too!

© Neal Rolfe Chamberlain

Altruistic people do extraordinary things. Giving before being asked. Doing things for others without needing to be thanked. Cleaning up not only after themselves but also for others who don't appear to care. Even dying for someone just because it was the right thing to do. These people are very rare in most societies.

Altruistic microbes are also hard to find unless you study certain yeasts. A study by K. Frohlich and F. Madeo has demonstrated that yeasts will die for their fellow yeast cells. They discovered by inserting certain genes from cells of mammals they could induce the yeast cells to kill themselves off. These mammalian genes produce certain forms of oxygen (oxygen radicals) that cause cell damage. In mammalian cells these genes start a process called apoptosis to begin. Apoptosis is an organized way cells in an animal die. In multicellular organisms cells are dying all the time. If cells were to die the way we normally think of death they would release a large number of toxic molecules into the area around them and could kill surviving neighbor cells. However, with apoptosis the cell death is very organized and results in very little damage to the surrounding cells in the mammalian body. Basically, nearly all the toxic molecules that result from cell death are destroyed in a cell undergoing apoptosis. This is very useful if part of a liver is dying. It would be counterproductive to have the rest of the healthy liver die just because part of the liver is ill.

Now why would yeast cells want to kill themselves off? They are after all single celled organisms with only themselves to think about. Oxygen although important for rapid yeast cell grow can cause damage. If a particular situation arises that results in lots of oxygen radicals large numbers of yeast will die. If they die and release all their cell damaging enzymes then the survivors would also die. This is bad for continuation of a species if lots of oxygen is around. To avoid losing all the members of the yeast population yeast cells also die by apoptosis. This results in less damage to the surviving neighbor cells and also provides nutrients for those surviving cells to begin the repopulating their particular place in the world (niche).

This study is very interesting and may help us understand apoptosis better. Apoptosis is an important subject because some cells in our bodies can turn off apoptotic mechanisms. These cells are called cancer cells. If we could better understand how apoptosis is controlled then maybe we could unravel some of the secrets of the cancer cell and develop better

The copyright of the article Yeast Can Be Altruistic Too! in Microbiology is owned by Neal Rolfe Chamberlain. Permission to republish Yeast Can Be Altruistic Too! in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.