Dormancy-to-death transition in yeast spores occurs due to gradual loss of gene-expressing ability
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Dormancy is colloquially considered as extending lifespan by being still. Starved yeasts form dormant spores that wake-up (germinate) when nutrients reappear but cannot germinate (die) after some time. What sets their lifespans and how they age are open questions because what processes occur - and by how much - within each dormant spore remains unclear. With single-cell-level measurements, we discovered how dormant yeast spores age and die: spores have a quantifiable gene-expressing ability during dormancy that decreases over days to months until it vanishes, causing death. Specifically, each spore has a different probability of germinating that decreases because its ability to - without nutrients - express genes decreases, as revealed by a synthetic circuit that forces GFP expression during dormancy. Decreasing amounts of molecules required for gene expression - including RNA polymerases - decreases gene-expressing ability which then decreases chances of germinating. Spores gradually lose these molecules because they are produced too slowly compared to their degradations, causing gene-expressing ability to eventually vanish and, thus, death. Our work provides a systems-level view of dormancy-to-death transition. Short summary This study identifies systems-level quantities that decay during dormancy in Saccharomyces cerevisiae spores and thereby reveals the meaning of ageing for dormant yeast spores and shows that they die when their gene-expressing ability is irreversibly lost. Highlights For a given glucose concentration, a dormant yeast spore has a well-defined probability of germinating (“germination ability”). A spore’s germination ability positively correlates with its RNAP I-III levels and the gene-expression (GFP) level it can realize when the expression is forced without nutrients. Ageing during dormancy means gradual decreases in germination ability, RNAP levels, and GFP-level realizable when expression is forced. Spores die after sufficiently losing gene-expressing ability and drugs that inhibit gene expression during dormancy shorten spores’ lifespans (e.g., from months to a day).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".