An efficient selection producing structural gene mutants of yeast alcohol dehydrogenase resistant to pyrazole

Selection for resistance to allyl alcohol in respiration-incompetent Saccharomyces cerevisiae produces a high proportion of mutants that can be localized within the ADH2 structural gene and that still, because of the type of selection employed, retain enzyme activity. We show here that a similar type of selection produces a similarly high proportion of mutants resistant to the competitive inhibitor pyrazole. The first four mutants examined, picked at random from a collection of spontaneous pyrazole-resistant mutants, show altered--usually increased--KM values for ethanol and NAD+, and markedly increased K1 values for pyrazole, compared with the wild type. When these kinetic measures and their electrophoretic mobilities were compared, all the mutants could be clearly distinguished from each other as well as from wild type. Genetic analysis shows these mutants to be close to and probably resident in the structural gene. For a variety of reasons, these mutants are even more favorable subjects for population genetic analysis and the dissection of molecular microevolution than are allyl alcohol-resistant mutants.