The chronological life span of Saccharomyces cerevisiae to study mitochondrial dysfunction and disease

Saccharomyces cerevisiae has played an important role as a model system to understand the biochemistry and molecular biology of mammalian cells. The genetic tools available and the short life span have also made S. cerevisiae a powerful system to study aging. The yeast chronological life span (CLS) is a measure of the survival of a non-dividing population of cells, and thus can model aging of mammalian non-dividing cells but also of higher eukaryotic organisms. The parallel description of the pro-aging role of homologs of Akt, S6 kinase, adenylate cyclase, and Tor in yeast and in higher eukaryotes, suggests that findings in the S. cerevisiae will be valuable to understand human aging and diseases. Moreover, the similarities between mitochondria and age-dependent mitochondrial damage in yeast and mammalian cells indicate that S. cerevisiae is a valuable model to study mitochondrial dysfunction and diseases that involve this organelle. Here, we describe the use of S. cerevisiae CLS in combination with three methods to quantify age-dependent mitochondrial damage and the accumulation of mitochondrial DNA mutations.