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ABSTRACT

    This experiment studied what genes Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or Baker’s yeast, uses to control oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is caused by reactive oxygen molecules such as free radicals and peroxides which take electrons from important molecules such as DNA and lipids. The zms1 and zms2 genes have been found to relieve this stress in yeast by increasing activities of antioxidant enzymes. This study created mutant yeasts by knocking out zms1, zms2, and both zms1 and zms2 at the same time. We compared zms2Δ to wild-type yeast using microarray technology. After the microarray was completed we used MAGIC TOOL to analyze the data by finding which genes were up regulated and which were down regulated. Using the GCAT and NCPI databases we were able to find the functions of these genes. We hypothesized that the genes that would be up regulated would help compensate for the lack of zms1 and zms2 by helping to relieve oxidative stress. We found that the only gene that did help relieve oxidative stress was GTO3. The rest of the up regulated genes' functions were not related to oxidative stress. As a result further study must be done in order to support our hypothesis.

Introduction    Methods    Results    Discussion    Literature Cited

Erik Anderson (Analysis of all three mutants) - andersel@jmu.edu               Michael Martin (Cluster Analysis) - martinmt@jmu.edu

Elizabeth Steidle Comparing zms2∆ to zms1∆ - steidlea@jmu.edu,                     Dustin Plutt - pluttdg@jmu.edu