The yeast gene ECM9 regulates cell wall maintenance and cell division in stress conditions.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae , Baker's yeast, is a well-studied model eukaryotic organism. Much of our knowledge about eukaryotic cell function comes from yeast studies, though nearly 10% of yeast genes remain uncharacterized. This study focuses on YKR004C, a verified gene of unknown function named ECM9 , predicted to be involved in cell division and cell wall maintenance or composition based on previous studies. We investigated the sensitivity in stress conditions of an ECM9 deletion strain, compared to wild-type, to cell wall integrity. These results suggest that ECM9 is involved in cell wall maintenance and the regulatory pathway determining cell division readiness under stress.