DOSAGE DEBATE: Analyses of gene copy number in wild strains of aneuploid yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) have come to different conclusions. © ISTOCK.COM/ALIENWORMZOND
The paper A.P. Gasch et al., “Further support for aneuploidy tolerance in wild yeast and effects of dosage compensation on gene copy-number evolution,” eLife, 5:e14409, 2016. Chromosomal commotion Like many organisms, lab yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) is intolerant of aneuploidy. “In the lab strain that’s been most studied, cells with an extra copy of a chromosome have just crazy different expression across the transcriptome,” says yeast researcher Audrey Gasch of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. But wild yeast, Gasch’s team recently found, may not be so sensitive. Expressing differences In 2015, Gasch and colleagues published an analysis comparing RNA levels and DNA content in aneuploid strains of wild yeast (eLife, 4:e05462). Doubling gene-copy number ought to double RNA abundance, the team reasoned, but some genes in these ...
