| Schizosaccharomyces pombe (also known as "fission yeast") is a species of fungi which is used as a model organism for a wide range of biological and medical research. Fission yeasts are useful because most of the time they are haploid so that both recessive and dominant mutations in their genes will result in the gene being expressed. Since each individual yeast cell has only one copy of each gene (unlike in diploid organisms like humans where a normal copy of a gene can make up for a recessive mutation on a "bad" copy) any change to its genetic structure will alter the cell's phenotype.
Schizosaccharomyces pombe was first described in 1893 by a scientist named P. Lindner. He isolated the yeast from a brand of East African beer, and so he named the organism after the Swahili word for beer ("pombe").
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