Grant: Canada Research Chairs

The remarkable extent to which the protein-coding genes are still functionally equivalent between humans and yeast emphasizes the power of distant organisms for studying human processes. Humans and yeast obviously differ dramatically with respect to cell and tissue organization. Nonetheless, our recent systematic study showed that nearly half of the tested protein-coding human genes could substitute for their yeast equivalents. The results reveal which conserved processes are still interchangeable creating direct assays of human gene function for that subset. Finally, these studies demonstrate the broad equivalence of function between yeast and humans, providing fundamental insights into gene evolution.