YES Growth Medium

Principle and Interpretation

Schizosaccharomyces pombe, also called "fission yeast", is a species of yeast. It is used as a model organism in molecular and cell biology. It is possibly the eukaryote with the shortest genome. These cells maintain their shape by growing through the cell tips and divide by medial fission to produce two daughter cells of equal sizes that makes them a powerful tool in cell cycle research. It was first developed as an experimental model in the 1950's for studying genetics (1, 2) and for studying the cell cycle (3, 4).

YES (yeast extract with supplements) Growth Medium is used for the vegetative growth of Schizosaccharomyces pombe. YES functions as a complete medium for fission yeast growth and it contains yeast extract, glucose and other supplements which include adenine, histidine, leucine, uracil and lysine hydrochloride. Dextrose serves as the carbon source. The generation time of a wild-type strain of fission yeast is about 2 hours in YES (5). Since the medium contains 30 grams per litre dextrose, the medium should be properly dissolved in water before autoclaving to avoid caramelization of the sugar.