Yeast Intermediary Metabolism By Dan G. Fraenkel, Harvard
Medical School © 2011 434 pp., illus. (138 b/w), appendix, index
The intermediary metabolism of small molecules is the meat and
potatoes of cell function. The pathways and modes of obtaining
energy, degradation and utilization of exogenous organic
nutrients, and formation of the building blocks of the main
macromolecules were a major focus of research in biology from
the turn of the 20th century into the 1970s. Other matters have
come to prominence, but the field is active, with interesting
problems that are central to biology and medicine. Molecular
biology developed through the use of one bacterium, Eschericha
coli, with the saying Whats true for E. coli is true for
elephants. In recent years, an analogous workhorse has been the
eukaryotic microbe bakers yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, used
in many studies of cell biology common to multicellular
organisms. This book explains metabolism as based on
Saccharomyces. The topics include central metabolic