Leveraging budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae for discovering aging modulation substances for functional food

Abstract

Background: Discovery of bioactive substances contained in functional food and the mechanism of their aging modulation are imperative steps in developing better, potent and safer functional food for promoting health and compression of morbidity in the aging population.  Budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) is invaluable model organism for aging modulation and bioactive compounds discovery. In this paper we have conceptualised a framework for achieving such aim. This framework consists of four components: discovering targets for aging modulation, discovering and validating caloric restriction mimetics, acting as cellular systems for screening natural products or compounds for aging modulation and being a biological factory for producing bioactive compounds according to the roles the yeast systems play. It have been argued that the component of being a biological factory for producing bioactive compounds has much underexplored which also present an opportunity for new active substance discovery and validation for health promotion in functional food industry.Keywords: Aging modulation, budding yeast, functional food, bioactive substances, cell factory