The influence of solvent stress on MMS-induced genetic change in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

A test for uniparental disomy in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Uniparental disomy is a condition in a diploid organisms where one parental chromosome is absent and its homolog from the other parent duplicated. It can be a cause of genetic somatic disease in mammals because of imprinting. Imprinting creates a sex-specific pattern of epigenetic gene inactivation at least in mammals and, consequently, a complete set of both maternal and paternal chromosomes is required for normal development. Moreover, it has been shown for several types of tumors that recessive tumor alleles originally present in a heterozygous condition in normal somatic tissue have become homozygous in the tumor cells. Homozygosity is frequently caused by uniparental disomy. A similar situation is found in Saccharomyces cerevisiae where the spontaneous or induced expression of linked recessive alleles flanking a common centromere is preponderantly due to isodisomy where one of the homologs is lost and the retained homolog duplicated. In contrast to the situation in Aspergillus nidulans, isodisomy does not appear to be caused by two sequential and independent events of malsegregation resulting first in an unstable trisomic condition from which a normal disomic condition is restored through segregational loss of one supernumerary chromosome. Rather, an as yet unknown mechanism seems to directly generate isodisomy and thus Saccharomyces cerevisiae could provide a short-term test for the detection of this type of genetic change.

Tests for recombinagens in fungi

Three types of mitotic recombination can be studied in Aspergillus nidulans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae: (1) The classical type of reciprocal mitotic crossing-over which can be detected when it occurs between non-sister chromatids at the four-strand stage followed by co-segregation of a crossing-over and a non-crossing-over chromatid in the subsequent mitotic division. Consequently, mitotic crossing-over reflects cellular responses to primary genetic damage in the G2 phase of the cell cycle. (2) Mitotic gene conversion is a unidirectional event of a localized transfer of genetic information between non-sister chromatids which in yeast can extend to segments of up to 18 cM and even beyond 22 cM in Aspergillus nidulans. Mitotic gene conversion can also occur between unreplicated chromatids and lead to the expression of the newly created genotype without any need for a subsequent mitotic cell division. It reflects a cellular response in G1. (3) Mitotic sister-strand gene conversion can be studied in a recently constructed strain with the same technical ease as classical non-sister chromatid gene conversion. It can be induced by chemicals which do not induce mutation in the Salmonella system and non-sister chromatid gene conversion. Mitotic segregation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae results almost exclusively from crossing-over and gene conversion whereas mitotic chromosomal malsegregation contributes only very little. In contrast to this, in Aspergillus nidulans, both processes contribute considerably so that mitotic segregants always have to be tested for their mechanistic origin.

Formaldehyde, glyoxal, urethane, methyl carbamate, 2,3-butanedione, 2,3-hexanedione, ethyl acrylate, dibromoacetonitrile and 2-hydroxypropionitrile induce chromosome loss in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Induction of mitotic chromosome loss could be demonstrated for the dialdehyde glyoxal, the diketones 2,3-butanedione and 2,3-hexanedione, ethyl and methyl carbamate, ethyl acrylate, dibromoacetonitrile, 2-hydroxypropionitrile and formaldehyde, but only when they were combined with subacute concentrations of propionitrile, which is a strong inducer of chromosomal malsegregation. The same chemicals did not induce mitotic chromosome loss when applied in pure form. However, glyoxal, ethyl acrylate, dibromoacetonitrile and formaldehyde when applied in pure form also induced mitotic recombination. Respiratory deficiency was induced, in the absence of propionitrile, by these recombinogenic agents and also by 2,3-hexanedione and 2-hydroxypropionitrile which are not recombinogenic.