Presenter(s): Jacob Evarts—Computer and Information Science
Faculty Mentor(s): David Garcia
Session: Prerecorded Poster Presentation
Prions have been closely associated with fatal neurodegenerative diseases such as mad cow disease . However, recent evidence suggests that prions provide an additional class of epigenetic mechanism that works at a rapid pace . From an evolutionary standpoint, the ability to change phenotypes without waiting for genetic variance would be hugely beneficial in a high stress environment . Using two known techniques for increasing de novo prion formation, protein overexpression and environmental stressor, we performed a large-scale screen across many RNA modifying enzymes in budding yeast . The growth dynamics presented here suggest that putative prion-state induction could be a widespread epigenetic mechanism across yeast .