Yeast Genomics and drug target identification

The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is well recognized as a preferred eukaryote for the development of genomic technologies and approaches. Accordingly, a sizeable complement of genomic resources has been developed in yeast, and this genomic foundation is now informing a wide variety of disciplines. In particular, yeast genomic methodologies are gaining an expanding foothold in drug development studies, most notably as a preliminary tool towards drug target identification. In this review, we highlight many applications of yeast genomics in the identification of targeted genes and pathways of small molecules or therapeutic drugs. The applicability of genome-wide resources of yeast disruption and deletion mutants for drug-sensitivity/ resistance screening is presented here, along with a summary of microarray technologies for drug-based transcriptional profiling and synthetic interaction mapping. Applications of protein-interaction traps for potential drug target identification are also considered. Collectively, this overview of yeast genomics emphasizes the growing intersection between high-throughput model organism biology and medicinal chemistry - an intersection promising tangible advances for both academic and pharmaceutical fields alike.