Multidrug resistance as a dominant molecular marker in transformation of wine yeast

Pure wine yeast cultures are increasingly used in winemaking to perform controlled fermentations and produce wine of reproducible quality. For the genetic manipulation of natural wine yeast strains dominant selective markers are obviously useful. Here we demonstrate the successful use of the mutated PDR3 gene as a dominant molecular marker for the selection of transformants of prototrophic wine yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The selected transformants displayed a multidrug resistance phenotype that was resistant to strobilurin derivatives and azoles used to control pathogenic fungi in agriculture and medicine, respectively. Random amplification of DNA sequences and electrophoretic karyotyping of the host and transformed strains after microvinification experiments resulted in the same gel electrophoresis patterns. The chemical and sensory analysis of experimental wines proved that the used transformants preserved all their useful winemaking properties indicating that the pdr3-9 allele does not deteriorate the technological properties of the transformed wine yeast strain.