Schizosaccharomyces pombe is a primitive ascomycetous fungus, also known as fission yeast. It has been extensively used in general and molecular genetics, and its genome is fully sequenced. It is considered a very useful model organism for experimental research on fundamental properties of eukaryotic cells, such as genome organization, cell cycle control mechanisms, polarized cell growth, signal transduction, sexual differentiation, DNA damage repair, meiotic recombination, stress management in resting cells and epigenetic silencing.