The yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as a model system for the study of human genetic disease

Many human genes associated with disease have close homologs in yeast. Based on this homology, many human proteins have been studied using yeast expression systems. This paper will review research done in our laboratory using a yeast expression system to study the human protein galactose-1-phosphate uridylyltransferase, associated with galactosemia, as well as highlighting some of the advantages of this model system.