The Sensational Single Cell

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ZOOMING IN ON YEAST

Inside a mass of bread dough, yeast is alive and busy.

What does the life of a yeast cell look like at an individual level, through a microscope? While we won’t be able to see a single sensational yeast cell as close up as Dr. Otto could see his robots, we can see evidence that the yeast cells use energy and materials, dispose of waste, and reproduce themselves.

The yeast is made up of millions of separate, independent, microscopic cells. These self-reproducing cells need to be able to do the same four basic things that self-reproducing robots would need to be able to do:

  • Store and pass on operating instructions
  • Get energy
  • Get building materials
  • Dispose of waste

 

 

Let’s take a peek under the virtual microscope to see what those yeast cells are up to!

Production notes: We will link to one or more of these videos or something similar.

Continue to the next session to use your own microscope to take a look at the yeast cells in action.

Discussion questions:

What does yeast use sugar for?

What are two waste products that yeast produces?

What are three things the cell membrane does?

Remember how the characters in the Readers’ Theater imagined yeast in bread dough multiplying on and on forever? Do you think that’s possible? Why or why not?

Baker’s yeast is used for making bread; brewer’s yeast (a closely related kind of yeast) is used for brewing beer. Both kinds of yeast produce carbon dioxide waste. When there is no oxygen present, both kinds of yeast also produce alcohol (though the alcohol evaporates out of bread when it gets baked). Explain how the waste products of yeast are useful to beer makers. Where do you think the bubbles in beer come from?

 

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