Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) has been used as one of the main model systems for studying molecular mechanisms underlying cellular aging. A major technical challenge in studying aging in yeast is the isolation of aged cells from exponentially growing cell cultures, since aged cells in such cultures are rare. Several methods for isolating aged cells have been developed to achieve this. Here, we describe a biotin-streptavidin affinity purification protocol for isolating aged yeast cells. It consists of three main steps: biotinylation of yeast cells, culturing cells to the desired age, and harvesting the aged cells using streptavidin-coated magnetic microbeads. The isolated aged cells can be used for microscopy, biochemistry, or molecular biology analysis.
Keywords: Affinity purification; Aged cells; Aging; Biotinylation; Bud scar; Colocalization; Streptavidin.