The yeast may be the same, but you won't find the research Dr. Stanley Fields conducts on these single-celled organisms happening in any of our fine local breweries.
Yeast cells are relatively simple.
They contain chromosomes in a nucleus and a typical cell membrane, which makes them a good target for investigators who want to study interactions between molecules inside the cell. But yeast cells are fungi. This means the genetic material in yeast and the essential functions of its proteins have been around for a long, long time, perhaps close to one billion years. Thus, yeast genes and sequences bear a resemblance to our own. The similarity allows researchers who use a broad range of techniques to study the functions of yeast proteins to eventually apply that knowledge to humans, Fields said.