A yeast strain for simultaneous detection of induced mitotic crossing over, mitotic gene conversion and reverse mutation

A diploid yeast strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae is described which can be used to study induction of mitotic crossing-over, mitotic gene conversion and reverse mutation. Mitotic crossing-over can be detected visually as pink and red twin-sectored colonies which are due to the formation of homozygous cells of the genotype ade2-40/ade2-40 (deep red) and ade-2-119/ade2-119 (pink) from the originally heteroallelic condition ade2-40/ade2-119 which forms white colonies. Mitotic gene conversion is monitored by the appearance of tryptophan nonrequiring colonies on selective media. The alleles involved are trp5-12 and trp5-27 derived from the widely used strain D4. Mutation induction can be followed by the appearance of isoleucine nonrequiring colonies on selective media. D7 is homoallelic ilvI-92. The isoleucine requirement caused by ilvI-92 can be alleviated by true reverse mutation and allele non-specific suppressor mutation. The effects of ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS), nitrous acid, ultraviolet light and hycanthone methanesulfonate were studied with D7 stationary phase cells. Mitotic crossing-over as monitored by red/pink twin-sectored colonies was almost equally frequent among normal and convertant cells. This showed again that nitotic recombination is not due to the presence of a few cells committed to meiosis in an otherwise mitotic cell population. The dose-response curves for induction of mitotic gene conversion and reversion of the isoleucine requirement were exponential. In contrast to this, the dose-response curve for induction of twin sectored red and pink colonies reached a plateau at doses giving about 30% cell killing. This could partly be due to lethal segregation in the progeny of treated cells. None of the agents tested would induce only one type of mitotic recombination, gene conversion or crossing-over. There was, however, some mutagen specificity in the induction of isoleucine prototrophs