FISH as a tool to investigate chromosome behavior in budding yeast

Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) provides an effective means to delineate chromosomes and their subregions during all stages of the cell cycle. This makes FISH particularly useful for studying chromosome behavior in species with minute genomes and/or poor chromosome condensation at metaphase, which is the case in model organisms such as the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Since its introduction in 1992, FISH with composite whole chromosome or locus specific probes has become an indispensable tool in the analysis of chromosome behavior in metaphase and interphase cells, and especially of meiotic chromosome pairing of wild-type and mutant yeast strains.