Construction of a yeast strain devoid of mitochondrial introns and its use to screen nuclear genes involved in mitochondrial splicing

We have constructed a respiring yeast strain devoid of mitochondrial introns to screen nuclear pet- mutants for those that play a direct role in mitochondrial intron excision. Intron-less mitochondria are introduced by cytoduction into pet- strains that have been made rho0; cytoductants therefrom recover respiratory competency if the original pet- mutation is required only for mitochondrial splicing. By this means, we have identified 11 complementation groups of such genes. Their total number may be estimated as about 18.