Yeast membranes and cell wall: from basics to applications

Abstract

The surfaces of cells and organelles are crucial territories whose proper structure and function are essential for all cellular activities. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the cell envelope alone (plasma membrane and cell wall) occupies about 15 % of the total cell volume (Feldmann 2010). After adding in the membranes of the mitochondria, nuclei, vacuoles, peroxisomes, endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi apparatus as well as a monolayer covering the surface of lipid particles, there is very little room left for the cytosol or organellar matrices. The cell and organellar surfaces sense the environment, relay this information to the interior via signal transduction pathways, mediate (or prevent) the entry of chemicals, excrete toxic substances, enable an uneven distribution of ions thus generating ion and pH gradients that are the driving forces for essential cell processes. Yeast cell surfaces also facilitate the communication of a cell with its neighbors, and, in a yeast pathogen, interact with the host immune system. These and other roles of the cell and organelle surfaces are widely recognized, yet far from fully understood. Current knowledge in this field has been built on pioneering studies, of which a substantial number were conducted by Czech and Slovak scientists in the 1960s. Among others, Oldřich Necas and his colleagues in Brno established a world-class school of cell wall biogenesis (Necas 1961), Eva Streiblova (1968) and her students in Prague perfected various microscopic techniques and opened the yeast cell up to direct observation of its membranous structures, and Ladislav Kovac and his co-workers in Bratislava employed yeast mutants to elucidate processes involved in mitochondrial bioenergetics and biogenesis (Kovac 1974). This long tradition of research on the yeast cell wall and organelles in the former Czechoslovakia was reflected by the fact that for its 30th anniversary, the International Specialized Symposium on Yeast (ISSY) returned to the country where the 1st ISSY was held in Smolenice castle in 1971 and was dedicated to the yeast cell surface and organelles. The conference (http://www.issy2013.org) was organized by the International Commission on Yeasts (ICY; http://icyeast.org) and the Yeast Commission of the Czechoslovak Society for Microbiology (http://www.chem. sk/yeast/indexen.htm). The meeting was held in June 18–23, 2013 in Stara Lesna in the High Tatras. The core of these crystalline granitoids was formed from solidified magma in the Paleozoic Era (cca 335 million years ago; Poller and Todt 2000). This event took place 400–800 million years after Ascomycota diverged from Basidiomycota and the first yeast-like organisms appeared on Earth (Hedges et al. 2004; Scannell et al. 2007). Since then various geological processes have resulted in a formation of a wide variety of beautiful alpine peaks, valleys, lakes Communicated by S. Hohmann.