Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
2034909 Bioscience Hypotheses 2008 5 Pages PDF
Abstract

Budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has two distinct lifespans. The replicative lifespan is defined as the number of progeny cells that a mother cell can have prior to senescence while the chronological lifespan is a measure of the time nondividing cells remain viable. Mechanisms for cells to choose the type of lifespans appropriate to environmental conditions to minimize DNA damage should be critical for maintenance of viability, an interesting question worthy of further investigation. To this end, we hypothesize that chronologically aged cells are defective in the lifespan choosing mechanism so that DNA replication, characteristic of the replicative lifespan, initiates near end of the chronological lifespan. Replication may frequently stall due to the limited resources and oxidative stress, leading to replication fork stall and fatal DNA damage. We will use the 2D DNA gel electrophoresis to examine replication initiation and stall at rDNA in the chronologically aged cells.

Related Topics
Life Sciences Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (General)
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