From blood to stress-my life investigating cell differentiation

This short retrospective covers more than 50 years of research. I spent most of it doing yeast genetics and genetic engineering. It has been my great privilege to be part of the international group of yeast genetics researchers. With many of them named in this retrospective, I am connected in lifelong friendships and the same is true for my students and collaborators. The question which we wanted to ask is "How does the genome of the cell and cell differentiation adapt to changing and stressful environmental conditions?" The two examples we studied were sporulation and pseudohyphal growth. Both forms of differentiation are triggered by the stress of starvation. In the pathway of regulation of pseudohyphal growth, a yeast NADPH oxidase (discovered by our group) plays a major role.