Genome instability and chromosomal rearrangements in a heterothallic wine yeast

Wine strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae are usually homothallic diploids and show chromosome length polymorphism. We describe the analysis of a heterothallic strain heterozygous for the mating types a and alpha. Surveying cultures of the strain, we found a remarkable degree of heterogeneity in ploidy and in electrophoretic karyotype. The CHEF analysis of tetrads and dyads revealed an enormous variability of band patterns hampering the analysis of chromosome segregation. We propose that the instability of ploidy and chromosome polymorphism might be due to heterothallism that precludes the process "genome renewal" (MORTIMER et al. 1994) by selfdiploidization of spore clones.