Dr. Yifat Goldshmidt

PhD student







Information processing by nutrient sensing pathways in Saccharomyces Cerevisae


The yeast Saccharomyces Cerevisae senses its environment and react according to nutrient availability by changing their metabolism, transcriptional profile and developmental program. These pathways appear to involve functional duplications and/or redundancy of transcription factors, as some of the transcription factors are activated or suppressed through the same signals. We are asking three major questions:

  •  Why do cells need multiple transcription factors that are activated through the same combination of signals?

  •  What is the purpose of intermediate-level signal merging? Why does the cell need crosstalk at multiple levels between sensing pathways?

  • Do the cell's signaling pathways encode dependencies between nutrients in its natural habitat?


To study these questions we follow localization dynamics of downstream transcription factors under various signal combinations in single cells. We also examine how these dynamics are altered upon manipulation of the signaling network structure.