Faculty Opinions recommendation of Gametogenesis eliminates age-induced cellular damage and resets life span in yeast.
Year: 2011
Type: peer-review
Abstract: Eukaryotic organisms age, yet detrimental age-associated traits are not passed on to progeny.How lifespan is reset from one generation to the next is not known.We show that in budding yeast resetting of lifespan occurs during gametogenesis.Gametes (spores) generated by aged cells show the same replicative potential as gametes generated by young cells.Age-associated damage is no longer detectable in mature gametes.Furthermore, transient induction of a transcription factor essential for later stages of gametogenesis extends the replicative lifespan of aged cells.Our results indicate that gamete formation brings about rejuvenation by eliminating age-induced cellular damage.Most if not all eukaryotic organisms age, however, the age-induced changes are not transmitted to the progeny.How lifespan is reset from one generation to the next is not known.We wished to test the hypothesis that resetting of lifespan occurs during gametogenesis.In budding yeast, gamete formation (sporulation) requires meiosis and includes the generation of new membrane compartments, protein and organelle degradation, and synthesis of a resistant spore wall (1).To determine whether gamete formation causes rejuvenation, we asked whether spores derived from aged cells have reset their lifespan and are young or whether they inherit the progenitor's age and remain old.We isolated replicatively aged cells based on biotin labeling of mother cells (2) and induced them to sporulate in the same flask as young cells (Fig. S1).Upon sporulation, tetrads were dissected and the replicative lifespan (RLS) of each spore was measured.We found that the lifespans of the spores derived from young and aged cells were indistinguishable in two Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain backgrounds: W303, in which sporulation efficiency decreases with age ((3,4); Fig. 1B) and A364a, in which sporulation efficiency remains high despite aging ((4);Fig.S2).In contrast, aged cells obtained by the same procedure but not induced to sporulate die rapidly (Fig. 1A).The RLS of the four spores from a tetrad produced from young and aged cells is the same; no statistically significant differences are observed ((4); Fig. 1C).This is in contrast to mitosis, where age is asymmetrically inherited between the mother cell and the bud, culminating in the production of a young daughter and an old mother cell (5).Thus, sporulation resets RLS.We next asked how sporulation affects age dependent cellular changes such as increased levels of protein aggregation (6), aberrant nucleolar structures and increased levels of extra Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to A.A.
Author: Audrey Gasch
Institution: University of Wisconsin–Madison
Language: English
Subfield: Aging
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4246275391