Impacts of stress and aging on spore health in <i>Schizosaccharomyces pombe</i>

Fungi are integral to human health and well-being. They also offer scientists easy experimental systems to study facets of life shared with other eukaryotes, including humans. Most studies of fungal cell biology focus on actively growing cells, but fungi can also produce dormant cells known as spores. Spores promote fungal survival and dispersal and are often the agents of infection in pathogenic fungi. In this work, we characterize the spores produced by an easy-to-study model fungus, <i>Schizosaccharomyces pombe</i>. We find that the longevity and health of <i>S. pombe</i> spores decline over time and in response to heat stress. We characterize several traits associated with stressed and aged spores and identify parallels to aging cells in animals. This study expands the foundation for using <i>S. pombe</i> spores as a model system for fungal spore biology and as a model for the aging of non-dividing cells.