Replicative ageing in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe

Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been widely used as a model organism in studie s of replicative ageing and senescence. The relevance of these studies to a geing in other organisms has, however, been questioned, since this yeast di vides by budding rather than fission, the more common pattern in higher org anisms. Here we report that, contrary to popular belief, the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe also undergoes replicative senescence and in a ma nner superficially analogous to budding yeast. These experiments provide th e first evidence of age asymmetry in cell fission and are consistent with t he hypothesis of Jazwinski, that asymmetric division underlies culture immo rtality. Given their evolutionary divergence, comparison of the ageing dete rminants in fission and budding yeasts may help identify common mechanisms of the ageing process. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.