Editorial: Yeast cell aging and death

A conspicuous amount of knowledge about the molecular biol- ogy of the cell has come from studies on yeast Saccharomyces cere- visiae, mostly because of its unrivaled qualities as a toolkit for molecular genetics study. The discovery in the late 90’s that this unicellular eukaryote also may activate cell death programs both physiologically, like mammalian apoptotic cell death (Madeo, Frohlich and Frohlich 1997), and under environmental stress, completed the yeast-toolkit. The rst thematic issue on this topic of FEMS Yeast Research four years ago witnessed the no- ticeable amount of research carried out to get a deeper insight into the mechanisms of fundamental biological processes, al- ready discovered in yeast, such as genetic stability and expres- sion, cell cycle, organelle biogenesis and cross-talk. Indeed, it has been possible to study these processes with the added di- mension to discover their function and interrelationships in cell homeostasis maintenance considering also the effect of envi- ronmental cues.