Molecular Cloning and Characterization of Small Viral Genome in Fission Yeast

Fission yeast is a single-cell eukaryote that has been used extensively as a model organism to study cell biology and virology of higher eukaryotes including plants and humans. In particular, it is a very well-tested model to study evolutionary highly conserved cellular activities such as cell proliferation, cell cycle regulation, and cell death. Some of the advantages of using fission yeast as a surrogate system: easy to carry out functional and genome-wide analysis of small viral genome, easy to maintain in the laboratory with a relatively short doubling time. It is genetically amendable and can be used to test the effect of gain-of-function or loss-of-function of a gene product. Here, we describe a streamlined and large-scale molecular cloning strategy for genome-wide characterization of small viruses in fission yeast.