Stress-controlled transcription factors, stress-induced genes and stress tolerance in budding yeast

The transcriptional response to environmental changes is a major topic in b oth basic and applied research. From a basic point of view. to understand t his response includes unravelling how the stress signal is sensed and trans duced to the nucleus, to identify which genes are induced under each stress condition and, Finally, to establish the phenotypic consequences of this i nduction in stress tolerance. The possibility of using genetic approaches h as made the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae a compelling model to study stre ss response at a molecular li vel. Moreover, this information call be used to isolate and characterise stress-related proteins in higher eukaryotes an d to design strategies to increase stress resistance in organisms of indust rial interest. In this review the progress made in recent years is discusse d. (C) 2000 Federation of European Microbiological Societies. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.