The Benefits of Humanized Yeast Models to Study Parkinson’s Disease

Over the past decade, the baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has proven to be a useful model system to investigate fundamental questions concerning the pathogenic role of human proteins in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease (PD). These so-called humanized yeast models for PD initially focused on α -synuclein, which plays a key role in the etiology of PD. Upon expression of this human protein in the baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae , the events leading to aggregation and the molecular mechanisms that result in cellular toxicity are faithfully reproduced. More recently, a similar model to study the presumed pathobiology of the α -synuclein interaction partner synphilin-1 has been established. In this review we will discuss recent advances using these humanized yeast models, pointing to new roles for cell wall integrity signaling, Ca 2+ homeostasis, mitophagy, and the cytoskeleton.