25 Yeast Genetic Strain and Plasmid Collections

The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a very suitable organism for genetic analysis and now its genome has been completely sequenced; deletion mutants for each gene can be easily established by reverse genetics. Using the very precise recombination apparatus of S. cerevisiae, each gene locus can be replaced by selection markers, such as amino acid auxotrophies, nucleoside auxotrophies, or dominant resistance markers. This allowed the generation of a collection of mutants for each of the approximately 6000 open reading frames (ORFs) within the S. cerevisiae genome. The deletion cassettes can be amplified by polymerase chain reaction from the respective deletion mutant, so that the deletion can be easily introduced into any S. cerevisiae strain of interest. Currently, deletion mutants for about 5900 genes are available from the various S. cerevisiae strain collections. In addition, an increasing number of strains and plasmids can be received where genes are under regulated expression, have affinity tags for easy purification of the respective protein, and are fused to the green fluorescence protein for their easy cellular localization.