According to a new research, in spite of many years of evolution after separation, humans and yeast share a number of genes. The new research could be used to analyze how engineered yeast can help in testing drugs.

Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin engineered yeast that contains human genes. According to the researchers, a number of genes from a common ancestor live on nearly unchanged. The researchers said that they detected a number of genes so far and approximately 450 of them could be critical for the survival for yeast. As per the researchers, they took away the yeast version of every gene and then replaced it with the human version.

Edward Marcotte, co-director of the Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology and professor at the University of Texas’ Department of Molecular Biosciences, said that cells usually use a common set of parts and they share many genes even after a billion years of independent evolution.

Marcotte said, “It's a beautiful demonstration of the common heritage of all living things — to be able to take DNA from a human and replace the matching DNA in a yeast cell and have it successfully support the life of the cell”.

According to Marcotte, there could be thousands of swappable genes between humans and yeast. About 200 unique genes have already been identified and these genes could be useful in the search for drugs to treat a number of human genetic diseases. The research by biologists from the University of Texas has been published in the journal Science.

According to the biologists, studies in near future could compare different strains of humanized yeast to understand more that how mutations affect a person's health.