Development of a system for multicopy gene integration in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

In this study we describe construction and evaluation of a vector for multicopy integration in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In this vector a modified selective marker and a reporter gene PHO8 (encoding alkaline phosphatase) were flanked with delta sequences of the Ty1 transposon. Modified by error-prone PCR version of selection marker kanMX4 was obtained from Escherichia coli clone with impaired geneticin (G418) resistance. The attenuation of kanMX4 gene provides an opportunity to select for explicitly multicopy integration of the module in S. cerevisiae using moderate (200 mg L(-1)) antibiotic concentrations. The developed system provided integration of 3-10 copies of the module in the genome of S. cerevisiae. High copy integration events were confirmed by qRT-PCR, Southern hybridization and reporter enzyme activity measurements.