Previous studies have shown that mitochondrial petites of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae appear to have some advantage over their wild type counterparts in terms of fermentative performance. In this thesis evidence is presented that inhibition of the respiratory chain by chemical or genetic means leads to an increase in ethanol formed per unit sugar and a decrease in biomass per unit sugar. The genetic studies involve a mutation in formation of subunit III of the cytochrome £ oxidase complex (pet!22) and a mutation in putative mitochondrial pyruvate transport (tpyl). The chemical study involves inhibition of mitochondrial pyruvate transport by a specific inhibitor alpha-cyano-4-hydroxycinnamic acid. To try and discover more of the nature of the tpyl mutation a gene was cloned from a yeast centromeric genomic library which complemented the mutation. The insert containing the complementing gene was reduced in size and sequenced. An open reading frame containing 1698 nucleotides coding for 566 amino acids was discovered. After comparison to databases the gene appeared to be undiscovered to date. No similarity was found between the translated protein and others on databases with the exception of the FAS2 gene of Penicillium patulum. Studies of isolated mitochondria and cell growth pattern, of the tpyl mutant, revealed data typical of a classical petite mutation rather than a mutation in a regulatory gene as described by the original paper describing the mutant.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:306484 |
| Date | January 1991 |
| Creators | Donald, Kenneth Allen Gordon |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/108880/ |
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