The temperature dependence of mortality rate in starved yeast cells

Abstract

The thermal inactivation of stable and unstable (persistent lethal sectoring) lines of yeast was investigated at various temperatures. The temperature dependence of mortality rate was adequately described by the first-order chemical reaction formula. A semilog plot of temperature vs. life time of the stable line appeared as a straight line. On the other hand, that of the unstable line had two components: one had the same activation energy as the stable line and the other one had a different lower value. This new component may have originated in a mutated protein and caused the instability.