Bakers Yeast: An Ideal Model System to Study Gene Therapy
Eric Alani

Many human diseases have been studied at the molecular level and have been shown to result from a defect in a single gene. These findings have encouraged researchers to develop techniques aimed at curing such diseases by replacing defective genes with fully functional copies. My laboratory is interested in studying the recombinational steps that are thought to occur during gene replacement. We use the baker’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model because gene replacements occur in this organism with high efficiency.

In this exploration, students will perform “gene therapy” in baker’s yeast. These studies will be performed using yeast strains that are unable to grow because they lack a gene (TRP1) required for the synthesis of a particular amino acid. We will perform a transformation procedure in which a wild type copy of the TRP1 gene is introduced into both recombination proficient and deficient yeast strains that lack a functional TRP1 gene. The TRP1 gene will be introduced as either a DNA fragment that can integrate into the chromosome and replace the defective copy or within the context of an extrachromosomal plasmid. We will then examine whether these transformed strains have acquired the ability to express a functional copy of TRP1. We will also test the role of genetic recombination in this process.