A Microbe's Fountain of Youth

The yeast S.pombe is one of the best-studied microbes in the world. First isolated from East African millet beer over a century ago, it's been used as a model organism in molecular and cell biology for the past sixty years. And yet scientists have now just uncovered what may be its most striking feature--that under favorable conditions, it doesn't grow old.

Most single-cell organisms age. When they divide in half, one daughter cell typically receives older, defective material, while the other acquires newer components.

But S.pombe employs a different strategy. In a study published recently in Current Biology, a team of researchers has shown that, when unstressed, the yeast divides by splitting the damage equally. In a sense both daughters are "rejuvenated," since they're left with less damage than the mother cell.

"We have shown, for the first time, that there is a microbe immune to aging," says lead researcher Iva Tolić-Nørrelykke, of the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Germany.