Affiliations: The Australian Wine Research Institute, Urrbrae, SA 5064, Australia.
Keywords:
QTL, genetics, polygenic analysis, volatile aroma compound, flavour.
Related Article(s)?
Tom Den Abt, Ben Souffriau, Maria R. Foulquié-Moreno, Jorge Duitama, and Johan M. Thevelein (2016). Genomic saturation mutagenesis and polygenic analysis identify novel yeast genes affecting ethyl acetate production, a non-selectable polygenic trait. Microbial Cell 3(4): 159-175., 10.15698/mic2016.04.491
Corresponding Author(s):
Dr. Chris Curtin, chris.curtin@awri.com.au
Conflict of interest statement:
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Please cite this article as:
Chris Curtin and Toni Cordente (2016). What’s old is new again: yeast mutant screens in the era of pooled segregant analysis by genome sequencing. Microbial Cell 3(4): 132-134. doi: 10.15698/mic2016.04.488
© 2016 Curtin and Cordente. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.
What’s old is new again: yeast mutant screens in the era of pooled segregant analysis by genome sequencing
Authors:Chris Curtin and Toni Cordente
The Australian Wine Research Institute, Urrbrae, SA 5064, Australia.
Keywords:
QTL, genetics, polygenic analysis, volatile aroma compound, flavour.
Related Article(s)?
Tom Den Abt, Ben Souffriau, Maria R. Foulquié-Moreno, Jorge Duitama, and Johan M. Thevelein (2016). Genomic saturation mutagenesis and polygenic analysis identify novel yeast genes affecting ethyl acetate production, a non-selectable polygenic trait. Microbial Cell 3(4): 159-175., 10.15698/mic2016.04.491
Corresponding Author(s):
Conflict of interest statement:
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Please cite this article as:
Chris Curtin and Toni Cordente (2016). What’s old is new again: yeast mutant screens in the era of pooled segregant analysis by genome sequencing. Microbial Cell 3(4): 132-134. doi: 10.15698/mic2016.04.488
© 2016 Curtin and Cordente. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.
Abstract:
While once de-rigueur for identification of genes involved in biological processes, screening of chemically induced mutant populations is an approach that has largely been superseded for model organisms such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Availability of single gene deletion/overexpression libraries and combinatorial synthetic genetic arrays provide yeast researchers more structured ways to probe genetic networks. Furthermore, in the age of inexpensive DNA sequencing, methodologies such as mapping of quantitative trait loci (QTL) by pooled segregant analysis and genome-wide association enable the identification of multiple naturally occurring allelic variants that contribute to polygenic phenotypes of interest. This is, however, contingent on the capacity to screen large numbers of individuals and existence of sufficient natural phenotypic variation within the available population. The latter cannot be guaranteed and non-selectable, industrially relevant phenotypes, such as production of volatile aroma compounds, pose severe limitations on the use of modern genetic techniques due to expensive and time-consuming downstream analyses. An interesting approach to overcome these issues can be found in Den Abt et al. [cite]10.15698/mic2016.04.491[/cite] (this issue of Microbial Cell), where a combination of repeated rounds of chemical mutagenesis and pooled segregant analysis by whole genome sequencing was applied to identify genes involved in ethyl acetate formation, demonstrating a new path for industrial yeast strain development and bringing classical mutant screens into the 21st century.
doi: 10.15698/mic2016.04.488
Volume 3, pp. 132 to 134, published 04/04/2016.