Résumé
Between the first and tenth editions of this biannual rendezvous, yeasters were faced with an extraordinary revolution: Saccharomyces cerevisiae was indeed the first eukaryotic genome completely sequenced and released to the community, reviving its enormous potential for understanding life and opening the door to new approaches in biology. This revolution was immediately followed by ambitious programmes for sequencing the genomes of its distant cousins, e.g. the ‘Genolevures’ program held by a consortium of seven French laboratories, with the first aim of deciphering the different mechanisms of eukaryotic genome evolution over long periods of time. Taking advantage of the knowledge of these new genomes, researchers can now tackle much more easily relevant physiological studies in very different and distant yeasts, the diversity of which has once again been attractively represented at this 10th meeting. In addition to S. cerevisiae and Saccharomyces pombe still highly valued by researchers, many oral and written communications attested to the growing interest of our community for these ‘less-conventional’ yeasts. This explains why, in parallel with this genomic revolution, a mutation naturally occurred in the title of this meeting, with the recent emergence of three ‘s’ and subsequent transition from ‘Levure, Mode`le & Outil’ to ‘‘Levures, Mode`les & Outils’. This latest edition of LMO therefore brought together 250 participants from fields that rarely interact in order to discuss the current status of their research interests. This massive participation certified that our community remains very active, but also that it is particularly fond of this appointment. It offers a panoramic view of the extraordinary potential of yeasts, that continue to be driving forces in many fields of biology, from basic research to biotechnological challenges in coming years. Topics therefore ranged from a convincing demonstration of the central role of the mediator complex in RNA-polymerase II-dependent transcription to the engineering of new yeast strains to meet emerging energy problems that humanity will have to face in the near future. This report highlights some of the latest findings presented at this meeting, where two of the sessions were held in memory of renowned French colleagues Barbara Winsor and Pierre Thuriaux, who sadly passed away on the eve of retirement. 1. Beverages and energy: from ancestral use of yeasts to cutting edge biotechnological challenges2. Evolution and the genomics revolution3. Traffic and organelles: focus on mitochondrial ATP synthase4. Let’s travel into the nucleus: from DNA organisation to transcription5. RNA life, from synthesis to translation6. It’s all about control: key elements in cell cycle progression and establishment of cell polarity