Paul Lindner (1861 – 1945) was a German chemist and microbiologist, best known for discovering the fission yeast ''

Schizosaccharomyces pombe ''Schizosaccharomyces pombe'', also called "fission yeast", is a species of yeast used in traditional brewing and as a model organism in molecular and cell biology. It is a unicellular eukaryote, whose cells are rod-shaped. Cells typically meas ...

''.

Biography and career

Lindner was born in 1861 in Giesmannsdorf near the Neisse River, part of

Upper Silesia Upper Silesia ( ; ; ; ; Silesian German: ; ) is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia, located today mostly in Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic. The area is predominantly known for its heav ...

. He was a chemist, biologist, and microbiologist. While conducting research, he served as a professor at the Agricultural University of Berlin's Institute of Fermentation and Starch Production. In 1893, Lindner discovered the ''

'' (''S. pombe'') species of yeast by isolating it from samples of Bantu beer, a type of East African millet beer. The beer had been sent to Germany in 1890 by Major Hermann von Wissmann, and upon arrival, it was prepared as a pure culture (only the one strain being present). Lindner named the strain after the Swahili word for beer, "pombe". The original isolate strain Lindner identified in 1893 was homothallic, and it consisted of both + and – mating type cells. This strain featured cells that could undergo pair-wise mating to create asci with four

ascospore In fungi, an ascospore is the sexual spore formed inside an ascus—the sac-like cell that defines the division Ascomycota, the largest and most diverse Division (botany), division of fungi. After two parental cell nucleus, nuclei fuse, the ascu ...

s (asci is the plural word for an

ascus An ascus (; : asci) is the sexual spore-bearing cell produced in ascomycete fungi. Each ascus usually contains eight ascospores (or octad), produced by meiosis followed, in most species, by a mitotic cell division. However, asci in some gen ...

, the sexual spore-bearing cell produced in

ascomycete Ascomycota is a phylum of the kingdom Fungi that, together with the Basidiomycota, forms the subkingdom Dikarya. Its members are commonly known as the sac fungi or ascomycetes. It is the largest phylum of Fungi, with over 64,000 species. The def ...

fungi). Lindner's first published description of ''S. pombe'' was titled "Schizosaccharomyces pombe sp. nov., a New Ferment." Released in 1893, in the tenth volume of the German brewery weekly ''Wochenschrift für Brauerei'', the article described Lindner's lab's methods, results, and observations. It focused on the work of one of Lindner's employees, Ziedler, and how he purified a pure form of the yeast by using acidified beer

wort Wort () is the liquid extracted from the mashing process during the brewing of beer or whisky. Wort contains the sugars, the most important being maltose and maltotriose, that will be Ethanol fermentation, fermented by the brewing yeast to prod ...

. Lindner described ''S. pombe'' as "thoroughly peculiar" and called it a "fission yeast" due to its lack of asexual reproduction through

budding Budding or blastogenesis is a type of asexual reproduction in which a new organism develops from an outgrowth or bud due to cell division at one particular site. For example, the small bulb-like projection coming out from the yeast cell is kno ...

. Lindner's report also included a drawing of their observations with a microscope. The text of the original article was later translated from German into English by translator Ted Crump. In 1907, Lindner discovered ''

Endomyces fibuliger ''Endomyces'' is a genus of fungi in the family Dipodascaceae The Dipodascaceae are a family of yeasts in the order Saccharomycetales. According to the 2007 Outline of Ascomycota, the family contains four genera; however, the placement of ''S ...

,'' a filamentous and ascopore-forming yeast that he observed to generate

septate In biology, a septum (Latin for ''something that encloses''; septa) is a wall, dividing a cavity or structure into smaller ones. A cavity or structure divided in this way may be referred to as septate. Examples Human anatomy * Interatrial se ...

hyphae A hypha (; ) is a long, branching, filamentous structure of a fungus, oomycete, or actinobacterium. In most fungi, hyphae are the main mode of vegetative growth, and are collectively called a mycelium. Structure A hypha consists of one o ...

(hyphae that possess a septa that divides their cells) with many branches in addition to undergoing budding. He died on 4 January 1945, in

Donaueschingen Donaueschingen (; Low Alemannic German, Low Alemannic: ''Eschinge'') is a German town in the Black Forest in the southwest of the States of Germany, federal state of Baden-Württemberg in the Schwarzwald-Baar ''Districts of Germany, Kreis''. It ...

Notes

References

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lindner, Paul German microbiologists 1861 births 1944 deaths