Question: what have you found interesting about yeast?

Alexander Lorenz answered on 3 Jun 2021:

Yeast is an awesome model organism. It’s very easy to work with, and genetically it has a lot of similarities to human cells. So, if we discover something new in yeast, which in terms of science tends to be very quick, that base knowledge then helps us to look at the same processes in humans and mammals to find out whether it’s similar or different (without fail it tends to be more complex there). More recently, I started to work with a pathogenic yeast which can infect humans, here certainly the yeast is the center of attention: How can it infect humans? How do we treat infected humans?

What I find particularly interesting about them, they are just single cells, but there are many different species which do different things. Some are useful to humans (there wouldn’t be bread, doughnuts or pizza without them!), some are dangerous (because they infect humans), and some fulfill really important roles in their habitat which we still don’t fully understand.