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An Engineered Nonsense Ura3 Allele Provides A Versatile System To Detect The Presence, Absence And Appearance Of The [Em>Psi+] Prion In Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Anita L. Manogaran, Kathryn T. Kirkland, Susan W. Liebman

Biological Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Common methods to identify yeast cells containing the prion form of the Sup35 translation termination factor, [PSI⁺], involve a nonsense suppressor phenotype. Decreased function of Sup35p in [PSI⁺] cells leads to readthrough of certain nonsense mutations in a few auxotrophic markers, for example, ade1-14. This readthrough results in growth on adenine deficient media. While this powerful tool has dramatically facilitated the study of [PSI⁺], it is limited to a narrow range of laboratory strains and cannot easily be used to screen for cells that have lost the [PSI^{+ …}