Schizosaccharomyces pombe (also known as "fission
yeast") is a
species of
fungi which is used as a
model organism for a wide range of
biological and
medical research. Fission yeasts are useful because most of the time they are
haploid so that both
recessive and
dominant mutations in their
genes will result in the gene being
expressed. Since each individual
yeast cell has only one copy of each
gene (unlike in
diploid organisms like
humans where a normal copy of a gene can make up for a recessive mutation on a "bad" copy) any change to its
genetic structure will alter the cell's
phenotype.
Schizosaccharomyces pombe was first described in 1893 by a scientist named P. Lindner. He isolated the yeast from a brand of East African beer, and so he named the organism after the Swahili word for beer ("pombe").