The power of many: when genetics met yeasts and high-throughput

Abstract

In recent years, complex technological capabilities have evolved, driven by the need to solve complex and integrative biological questions through global analyses. New equipment allows the scaling up and automation of processes which previously were carried out on a very limited scale. Concomitant with the availability of sophisticated technology developed to increase experimental processes in parallel, it is essential to have a versatile biological model that allows us to generate and handle large collections of genetic variants with the greatest possible capacity. This is a critical aspect in order to approach saturation levels in each search, to minimise false-positive and false-negative rates. In this sense, yeasts represent a prototypical eukaryotic model with a remarkable genome editing potential: it is possible to generate and phenotype several thousand genetically diverse strains on a high-throughput scale. Here we review, with a focus on the most recent years, the combination of the power of yeasts with the technical advances in multi-level processing capability. This has resulted in unprecedented global mappings of a multitude of biological processes with important implications that reshape our knowledge of fundamental biology, evolution and biotechnological/biomedical applications.