Exploring the power of yeast to model aging and age-related neurodegenerative disorders

Aging is a multifactorial process determined by molecular, cellular and systemic factors and it is well established that advancing age is a leading risk factor for several neurodegenerative diseases. In fact, the close association of aging and neurodegenerative disorders has placed aging as the greatest social and economic challenge of the 21st century, and age-related diseases have also become a key priority for countries worldwide. The growing need to better understand both aging and neurodegenerative processes has led to the development of simple eukaryotic models amenable for mechanistic studies. Saccharomyces cerevisiae has proven to be an unprecedented experimental model to study the fundamental aspects of aging and to decipher the intricacies of neurodegenerative disorders greatly because the molecular mechanisms underlying these processes are evolutionarily conserved from yeast to human. Moreover, yeast offers several methodological advantages allowing a rapid and relatively easy way of establishing gene-protein-function associations. Here we review different aging theories, common cellular pathways driving aging and neurodegenerative diseases and discuss the major contributions of yeast to the state-of-art knowledge in both research fields.