The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is a 98-acre zoo, aquarium, botanical garden, natural history museum, publisher, and art gallery founded in 1952. Located just west of Tucson, Arizona, it features two miles (3.2 km) of walking paths traversing 21 acres of desert landscape. It is one of the most visited attractions in Southern Arizona.
The Sonoran Desert is a hot desert in North America and ecoregion that covers the northwestern Mexican states of Sonora, Baja California, and Baja California Sur, as well as part of the southwestern United States. It is the hottest desert in both Mexico and the United States. It has an area of 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 sq mi).
Komagataella is a methylotrophic yeast within the order Saccharomycetales. It was found in the 1960s as Pichia pastoris, with its feature of using methanol as a source of carbon and energy. In 1995, P. pastoris was reassigned into the sole representative of genus Komagataella, becoming Komagataella phaffii. Later studies have further distinguished new species in this genus, resulting in a total of 7 recognized species. It is not uncommon to see the old name still in use in the context of protein production, as of 2023; in less formal use, the yeast may confusingly be referred to as pichia.
Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge (CPNWR) is located in southwestern Arizona in the United States, along 56 miles (90 km) of the Mexico–United States border. It is bordered to the north and to the west by the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range, to the south by Mexico's El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve, to the northeast by the town of Ajo, and to the southeast by Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
The Saccharomycetaceae are a family of yeasts in the order Saccharomycetales that reproduce by budding. Species in the family have a cosmopolitan distribution, and are present in a wide variety of habitats, especially those with a plentiful supply of carbohydrate sources. The family contains the species Saccharomyces cerevisiae, perhaps the most economically important fungus.
Sonoran Desert National Monument is south of Goodyear and Buckeye and east of Gila Bend, Arizona. Created by Presidential proclamation on January 17, 2001, the 496,400 acres (200,886 ha) monument is managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management as part of the National Landscape Conservation System. The BLM already managed the lands, however under monument status, the level of protection and preservation of resources is enhanced. Sonoran Desert National Monument protects but a small portion of the Sonoran Desert, which is 120,000 square miles (311,000 km2), and extends well into California and the country of Mexico. The North Maricopa Mountains, South Maricopa Mountains and the Table Top Wildernesses protect the richest regions of desert habitat from development.
Pichia is a genus of yeasts in the family Pichiaceae with spherical, elliptical, or oblong acuminate cells. Pichia is a teleomorph, and forms hat-shaped, hemispherical, or round ascospores during sexual reproduction. The anamorphs of some Pichia species are Candida species. The asexual reproduction is by multilateral budding.
Ogataea polymorpha is a methylotrophic yeast with unusual characteristics. It is used as a protein factory for pharmaceuticals.
A yeast expression platform is a strain of yeast used to produce large amounts of proteins, sugars or other compounds for research or industrial uses. While yeast are often more resource-intensive to maintain than bacteria, certain products can only be produced by eukaryotic cells like yeast, necessitating use of a yeast expression platform. Yeasts differ in productivity and with respect to their capabilities to secrete, process and modify proteins. As such, different types of yeast are better suited for different research and industrial applications.
Pichia membranifaciens is a species of yeast.
Olneya tesota is a perennial flowering tree of the family Fabaceae, legumes, which is commonly known as ironwood, desert ironwood, or palo fierro in Spanish. It is the only species in the monotypic genus Olneya. This tree is part of the western Sonoran Desert in Mexico and United States.
The Lower Colorado River Valley (LCRV) is the river region of the lower Colorado River of the southwestern United States in North America that rises in the Rocky Mountains and has its outlet at the Colorado River Delta in the northern Gulf of California in northwestern Mexico, between the states of Baja California and Sonora. This north–south stretch of the Colorado River forms the border between the U.S. states of California/Arizona and Nevada/Arizona, and between the Mexican states of Baja California/Sonora.
A killer yeast is a yeast, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is able to secrete one of a number of toxic proteins which are lethal to susceptible cells. These "killer toxins" are polypeptides that kill sensitive cells of the same or related species, often functioning by creating pores in target cell membranes. These yeast cells are immune to the toxic effects of the protein due to an intrinsic immunity. Killer yeast strains can be a problem in commercial processing because they can kill desirable strains. The killer yeast system was first described in 1963. Study of killer toxins helped to better understand the secretion pathway of yeast, which is similar to those of more complex eukaryotes. It also can be used in treatment of some diseases, mainly those caused by fungi.
Scheffersomyces stipitis is a species of yeast, belonging to the "CUG Clade" of ascomycetous yeasts. This is a group of fungi that substitute serine for leucine when the CUG codon is encountered. S. stipitis is distantly related to brewer's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which uses the conventional codon system. Found, among other places, in the guts of passalid beetles, S. stipitis is capable of both aerobic and oxygen limited fermentation, and has the highest known natural ability of any yeast to directly ferment xylose, converting it to ethanol, a potentially economically valuable trait. Xylose is a hemicellulosic sugar found in all angiosperm plants. As such xylose constitutes the second most abundant carbohydrate moiety in nature. Xylose can be produced from wood or agricultural residues through auto- or acid hydrolysis. Ethanol production from such lignocellulosic residues does not compete with food production through the consumption of grain.
Herman Jan Phaff was a scientist who specialised in yeast ecology. He was born in the Netherlands before moving to California at age of 26. He was active in Californian universities until his death. During his career he accumulated thousands of strains of yeast from the wild, and described 60 new taxa of yeast.
The role of yeast in winemaking is the most important element that distinguishes wine from fruit juice. In the absence of oxygen, yeast converts the sugars of the fruit into alcohol and carbon dioxide through the process of fermentation. The more sugars in the grapes, the higher the potential alcohol level of the wine if the yeast are allowed to carry out fermentation to dryness. Sometimes winemakers will stop fermentation early in order to leave some residual sugars and sweetness in the wine such as with dessert wines. This can be achieved by dropping fermentation temperatures to the point where the yeast are inactive, sterile filtering the wine to remove the yeast or fortification with brandy or neutral spirits to kill off the yeast cells. If fermentation is unintentionally stopped, such as when the yeasts become exhausted of available nutrients and the wine has not yet reached dryness, this is considered a stuck fermentation.
Gcn4 is a transcription factor and a “master regulator” for gene expression which regulates close to one tenth of the yeast genome. In a study by Razaghi et al, amino acid starvation activated the transcription factor Gcn4p, resulting in transcriptional induction of almost all genes involved in amino acid biosynthesis, including HIS4. Thus involvement of Gcn4 in regulation of both histidinol dehydrogenase HIS4 and interferon gamma hIFNγ was hypothesised as a scenario explaining the increased level of hIFNγ under amino acid starvation.
Drosophila metlerri, commonly known as the Sonoran Desert fly, is a fly in the genus Drosophila. The species is found in North America and is most concentrated along the southern coast of California and in Mexico. D. mettleri are dependent on plant hosts, namely, the saguaro and cardon cacti. Thus, they are most prevalent in arid, desert conditions. It is able to detoxify chemicals found in the rotting liquid of cacti hosts, which allows it to use otherwise lethal soil as a nesting site.
The Goode's thornscrub tortoise, also known as the Sinaloan thornscrub tortoise, Sinaloan desert tortoise or Goode's desert tortoise, is a species of tortoise that is native to the Sinaloan desert region. First described in 2016, G. evgoodei inhabits Tropical Deciduous Forest and Sinaloan Desertscrub biomes in Mexico. Its range may overlap in the north with G. morafkai, the Morafka's or Sonoran desert tortoise.
