Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

This application is submitted by two primary investigators at York University and requests funds for the purchase of two shaker incubators and accessories for the dedicated growth and study of the yeasts Schizosaccharomyces pombe and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. For the primary applicant, this equipment will be used specifically for the growth of S. pombe for the establishment of genetic screens searching for conserved regulators and factors important in cellular growth, metabolism and the response of cells to environmental stress, in agreement with this applicant's recently funded Discovery grant application. This is of fundamental scientific importance, as such factors are often highly conserved between lower organisms such as yeast and higher systems, including humans. Insight into such processes should not only provide valuable information into the nature of evolutionarily conserved adaptations to stress and metabolic processes found in all life forms, but could also illuminate paths of divergence between microbial organisms and higher organisms, providing potentially novel targets for anti-microbial compounds. For the secondary applicant, the requested equipment will be used primarily for growing S. cerevisiae to carry out the functional studies of the yeast PHD domain proteins, which was recently funded by an NSERC discovery grant. The objective of this project is to reveal the cellular interactions with different yeast PHD domain proteins and the effect of these interactions on normal cellular processes. This equipment will be essential to success of the projects of both laboratories, as there is no suitable and dedicated shaker available for the proposed research at York. This equipment will be made available to members of other research groups in the department and will be used in training of highly qualified personnel.