The Impact of Ageing on CHITIN Scars inSaccharomyces cerevisiae

. Ageing in yeast is determined by the number of times an individual cell is capable of dividing, termed its replicative capacity. As a consequence of division by budding both mother and daughter cell retain chitinous scar tissue at the site of cytokinesis (1,2). Daughter cells exhibit a frail structure known as the birth scar, while the mother cell displays a more substantial bud scar. The number of bud scars present on the cell surface is therefore directly related to the number of times a cell has divided. It has been hypothesized that scars may be subject to stretching in conjunction with cell expansion (1), however there has been no previous study to support this observation.