title: How to bake a brain: yeast as a model neuron.
abstract: More than 30 years ago Dan Koshland published an inspirational essay presenting the bacterium as a model neuron (Koshland, Trends Neurosci 6:133-137, 1983). In the article he argued that there are several similarities between neurons and bacterial cells in "how signals are processed within a cell or how this processing machinery can be modified to produce plasticity". He then explored the bacterial chemosensory system to emphasize its attributes that are analogous to information processing in neurons. In this review, we wish to expand Koshland's original idea by adding the yeast cell to the list of useful models of a neuron. The fact that yeasts and neurons are specialized versions of the eukaryotic cell sharing all principal components sets the stage for a grand evolutionary tinkering where these components are employed in qualitatively different tasks, but following analogous molecular logic. By way of example, we argue that evolutionarily conserved key components involved in polarization processes (from budding or mating in Saccharomyces cervisiae to neurite outgrowth or spinogenesis in neurons) are shared between yeast and neurons. This orthologous conservation of modules makes S. cervisiae an excellent model organism to investigate neurobiological questions. We substantiate this claim by providing examples of yeast models used for studying neurological diseases.
authors.affiliation: Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Martinstraße 12, 3400, Klosterneuburg, Austria. isabella.sarto-jackson@kli.ac.at.
authors.forename: Isabella
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Sarto-Jackson
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava, Mlynska dolina B-1, Ilkovicova 6, 842 15, Bratislava, Slovak Republic. tomaska@fns.uniba.sk.
authors.forename: Lubomir
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tomaska
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D001921:Brain; D016764:Cell Polarity; D002633:Chemotaxis; D006801:Humans; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009474:Neurons; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000166:cytology
keywords: Evolution; Model organism; Neuron; Yeast