The long-lasting love affair between the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the Epstein-Barr virus

The Epstein-Barr gammaherpesvirus (EBV) is the first oncogenic virus discovered in human. Indeed, EBV has been known for more than 50 years to be tightly associated with certain human cancers. As such, EBV has been the subject of extensive studies aiming at deciphering various aspects of its biological cycle, ranging from the regulation of its genome replication and maintenance to the induction of its lytic cycle, including the mechanisms that allow its immune evasion or that are related to its tumorogenicity. For more than 30 years the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has fruitfully contributed to a number of these studies. The aim of this article is to review the various aspects of EBV biology for which yeast has been instrumental, and to propose new possible applications for these yeast-based assays, as well as the creation of further yeast models dedicated to EBV. This review article illustrates the tremendous potential of S. cerevisiae in integrated chemobiological approaches for the biomedical research.