Bioasay for chemical toxicity using yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Multi-endpoint bioassay is a system for gathering information relative to the effects of newly synthesized chemicals and pollutants in the environment. To develop the multi-endpoint bioassay system, we estimated the effects of chemicals on growth ability (IC50), viability (LD50), stress protein induction, prion mutation, mitochondrial mutation, and chromosomal mutation using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model organism. These endpoints showed characteristic values to 32 kinds of reference chemicals, and we classified the chemicals into seven groups according to the endpoints. We concluded that the yeast system has the potential to be a multi-endpoint bioassay relative to human health and the ecosystem in general.