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Updated: May 15, 2026

Quantifying Yeast Chronological Life Span by Outgrowth of Aged Cells
Published on: May 6, 2009
Hypothesis: is yeast a clock model to study the onset of humans aging phenotypes?
Cristina Mazzoni1, Eleonora Mangiapelo, Vanessa Palermo
1Department of Biology and Biotechnology "Charles Darwin", University of Rome "La Sapienza" Rome, Italy ; Pasteur Institute-Cenci Bolognetti Foundation, University of Rome "La Sapienza" Rome, Italy.
Abstract:
In this paper we report the growth and aging of yeast colonies derived from single cells isolated by micromanipulation and seeded one by one on separated plates to avoid growth interference by surrounding colonies. We named this procedure clonal life span, and it could represent a third way of studying aging together with the replicative life span and chronological life span. In this study we observed over time the formation of cell mass similar to the human "senile warts" (seborrheic keratoses), the skin lesions that often appear after 30 years of life and increase in number and size over the years. We observed that similar signs of aging appear in yeast colonies after about 27 days of growth and increase during aging. In this respect we hypothesize to use yeast as a clock to study the onset of human aging phenotypes.
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