Bioasay for chemical toxicity using yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Multi-endpoint bioassay is a system for gathering information relative to t he effects of newly synthesized chemicals and pollutants in the environment . To develop the multi-endpoint bioassay system, we estimated the effects o f chemicals on growth ability (IC50), viability (LD50), stress protein indu ction, prion mutation, mitochondrial mutation, and chromosomal mutation usi ng the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model organism. These endpoints showed characteristic values to 32 kinds of reference chemicals, and we cla ssified the chemicals into seven groups according to the endpoints. We conc luded that the yeast system has the potential to be a multi-endpoint bioass ay relative to human health and the ecosystem in general.