CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Haploid Saccaromyces cerevisiae cells (budding yeast) exist in two mating types (a and α), which communicate via secretedpheromones. In a cells, α-factor pheromone triggers a fate decision to switch from normal growth to mating behavior, includinginduction of gene transcription and cell cycle arrest. In addition, when the cell cycle machinery commits cells to division, it blockspheromone response. Given that the pheromone pathway and the cell cycle machinery can inhibit each other, we decided tostudy at the single cell level how S.cerevisiae makes the cell fate choice of dividing or preparing to mate using a combination ofexperimentation and modeling.