101281 news 1286755200 1475896269 Professor Yury Chernoff was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant for the "Development of yeast prionomics". Prions are self-perpetuating protein isoforms that transmit heritable traits in yeast. This mechanism of inheritance operates at the level of structural templating, when information is coded in protein structures rather than in DNA sequence. Based on recent studies, it is no longer possible to ignore the potential input of prions in inheritance and evolution. However, understanding of the biological roles of yeast prions remains at rudimentary levels, in part due to the lack of sequence- and phenotype-independent approaches for prion detection and monitoring. The overall goal of this research is to compose the prionome of a model yeast organism (the prionome is a catalogue of proteins capable of forming prions in their native state), and to assess impact on yeast biology and evolution. This will help to determine if prion profiles of the yeast strains are driven by natural selection in the same way as genotypic patterns are.

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