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Dr. Maggie Werner-Washburne
How Yeast Cells Plan to Live Forever:
The Paradox of Increasing Diversity
in Stationary Phase |
| Life evolved under conditions that are not constant and that are
frequently stressful. Starvation is one of the most predictable stresses for life on earth. Twenty years
ago, when I started working in yeast, everyone thought that their yeast cultures died after 2 days.
Somehow, that seemed wrong - especially given the ongoing survival of cultures for making beer, bread,
and sourdough starter! Today, we know much more about how yeast cells respond to carbon starvation - enough
to realize that we are just beginning to understand the 'plan' cells have to deal with periodic, sometimes
prolonged and severe starvation. I will present data showing that yeast cells differentiate in response to
starvation, that different genetic pathways may be responsible for the survival of distinct populations of
these cells, and that this differentiation event may be analogous to the cell division leading to the
production of stem cells, neurons, and other long-lived, quiescent cells. We are at a very exciting time
in this work and believe we have discovered an entirely new area in yeast that allows us to understand
microbial evolution as well as important eukaryotic processes such as quiescence, apoptosis, and cancer.
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| Dr. Maggie Werner-Washburne received her Ph.D. in Botany at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been a professor at UNM for almost 20 years and is an
AAAS Fellow. She has received numerous awards, including two Presidential awards for research and
mentoring. She, her husband Bruce, and brother-in-law Scott, play in a traditional, bluegrass gospel,
and folk group called Holy Water & Whiskey. |
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