Isolation of omnipotent suppressors in an [eta+] yeast strain

Abstract

Omnipotent suppressors decrease translational fidelity and cause misreading of nonsense codons. In the presence of the non-Mendelian factor [eta+], some alleles of previously isolated omnipotent suppressors are lethal. Thus the current search was conducted in an [eta+] strain in an effort to identify new suppressor loci. A new omnipotent suppressor, SUP39, and alleles of sup35, sup45, SUP44 and SUP46 were identified. Efficiencies of the dominant suppressors were dramatically reduced in strains that were cured of non-Mendelian factors by growth on guanidine hydrochloride. Wild-type alleles of SUP44 and SUP46 were cloned and these clones were used to facilitate the genetic analyses. SUP44 was shown to be on chromosome VII linked to cyh2, and SUP46 was clearly identified as distinct from the linked sup45.