Yeast is an organism that ferments in the dark,and exposure to sunlight may hinder or even disrupt this process.But in a recent study published in Contemporary Biology,researchers from the School of Biological Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology have designed the world's first photodynamic yeast strains,which may prefer light.
  Researchers say that converting yeast into phototrophic organisms is very simple.As long as a gene is moved,its growth rate in light is 2%faster than in darkness.The easy acquisition of this important evolutionary characteristic is of great significance for people to understand its origin and how to use it to study issues such as biofuel production,evolution,and cell aging.
  The team published a paper in the journal Nature last year,revealing how their single-cell model organism(Snowflake Yeast)evolved into multicellular organisms in 3000 iterations.In these experiments,energy emerged as a major limiting factor in multicellular evolution.
  One way for organisms to increase energy without using oxygen is to use light.A simpler way for organisms to utilize light is through the use of rhodopsin protein.This is a protein that can convert light into energy without the need for additional cellular mechanisms.
  Researchers say that rhodopsin protein is ubiquitous on the Tree of Life,indicating that organisms have acquired genes from each other during their evolutionary process.This type of gene exchange is called horizontal gene transfer.Horizontal gene transfer can lead to seemingly significant evolutionary leaps in a short period of time,much like bacteria rapidly developing resistance to certain antibiotics.This may occur in all types of genetic information,especially in rhodopsin proteins.
  To test whether solar powered rhodopsin protein can be equipped for single-cell organisms,researchers added rhodopsin genes synthesized from parasitic fungi to ordinary bread yeast.This special gene can be inserted into the vacuoles of cells.Yeasts equipped with rhodopsin vacuoles increased their growth rate by approximately 2%under light exposure.From an evolutionary perspective,this is a huge advantage.
  Due to the association between vacuolar function and cellular aging,the team also initiated a collaborative project to investigate how rhodopsin protein can reduce the aging effect in yeast.(Reporter Zhang Jiaxin)