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Erythromycin Slows Aging of Saccharomyces cerevisiae

^a Department of Biological Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City

John R. Menninger, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242-1324 E-mail: john-menninger{at}uiowa.edu.

Decision Editor: John Faulkner, PhD

Life span was measured by counting budding cycles in cohorts of yeast cells treated with erythromycin, paraquat, or geneticin. Paraquat treatment increases oxidative stress; geneticin treatment increases errors during cytoplasmic protein synthesis. Treating with either or both compounds resulted in shorter life spans. Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain K65-3D grown in 16 µg/ml erythromycin, a treatment that results in more accurate protein synthesis by bacteria, had a mean life span that was significantly longer (27%) than that of untreated yeast cells. The life spans of petite variants with no detectable respiratory activity or extranuclear DNA were not affected by this dose of erythromycin, which appeared, therefore, to exert its effect on aging by means of mitochondria. Fitting the data to Weibull and Gompertz distributions allowed calculation of an accelerated life model that relates life span to dose of erythromycin.