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Sourdough (rec.food.sourdough) Discussing the hobby or craft of baking with sourdough. We are not just a recipe group, Our charter is to discuss the care, feeding, and breeding of yeasts and lactobacilli that make up sourdough cultures. |
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Why yeast live dry
Hello Bread Group
BBC NEWS / SCIENCE/NATURE Eighty million years without sex The mystery of how an animal has survived for 80 million years without sex has been solved by UK scientists. A Cambridge team says the creature owes its existence to a genetic quirk that offers some recompense for its prolonged celibacy. Many asexual organisms have died out because they cannot adapt to changes in the natural world. But an evolutionary trick allows this pond-dweller to survive when conditions change, researchers report in Science. "There could be some benefit to millions of years without sex after all" Dr Alan Tunnacliffe, University of Cambridge The animal is a tiny invertebrate known as a bdelloid rotifer. It lives in freshwater pools. If deprived of water, it survives in a desiccated state until water becomes available again. The secret to this novel survival mechanism lies in a twist of asexual reproduction, whereby the animal is able to make two separate proteins from two different copies of a key gene. Prolonged celibacy Dr Alan Tunnacliffe, from the Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge, who led the research, said his team had been able to show for the first time that gene copies in asexual animals can have different functions. "It's particularly exciting that we've found different, but complementary, functions in genes which help bdelloid rotifers survive desiccation," he explained. "Evolution of gene function in this way can't happen in sexual organisms, which means there could be some benefit to millions of years without sex after all." The researchers discovered that two copies of a particular gene, known as LEA, in the asexual pond-dweller are different - giving rise to proteins with separate functions that protect the animal during dehydration. One copy stops other essential protein molecules from clumping together as the animal dries out, while the second copy helps to maintain the fragile membranes that surround the creature's cells. Joe Umstead |
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Why yeast live dry
"Joe Umstead" > wrote in message ... > The mystery of how an animal has survived for 80 million years without sex > has been solved by UK scientists. That's very interesting, but not very relevant to yeast, as far as I can figure out. As far as yeast is concerned, some strains are capable of sexual reproduction, probably not including bread yeasts. In those yeast strains capable of sexual reproduction, certain conditions, which may include drying, and the presence of complementary mating strains, are involved. Spores are the product of sexual reproduction. Spores are resistant to adverse conditions, including drying, but come to life and start reproducing in the usual way (by budding) when conditions are right. If you don't believe me, do a search on <sexual reproduction in yeast>. -- Dicky |
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Why yeast live dry
I am resisting the ufge to rename this thread alt.sex.yeast
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