How can yeast help us to understand the mysteries of cell biology?

Suitable for 14-19-year olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, school clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 biology.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• In Dr Fabrice Caudron’s lab at Queen Mary University of London, yeast is helping scientists to understand the inner workings of cells. By studying the “dating behaviour” of these microscopic creatures, Fabrice and his team made a discovery which could eventually help us combat diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s.

• This resource also contains an interview with Fabrice and his postdoctural research assistant. Dr Henry Oamen. If your students (or you) have questions for Fabrice or Henry, you/they can send them to the researchers online. All you need to do is to go to the article online (see the Futurum link below), scroll down to the end and type in the question(s). Fabrice and Henry will reply!

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Fabrice’s research.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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