Crl Mutants of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Resemble Both Mutants Affecting General Control of Amino Acid Biosynthesis and Omnipotent Translational Suppressor Mutants

Cyocloheximide resistant lethal (crl) mutants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, defining 22 unlinked complementation groups, are unable to grow at 37 degrees. They are also highly pleiotropic at their permissive temperature of 25 degrees. The mutants are all unable to arrest at the G1 stage of the cell cycle when grown to stationary phase or when starved for a single amino acid, though they do arrest at G1 when deprived of all nitrogen. The crl mutants are also hypersensitive to various amino acid analogs and to 3-aminotriazole. These mutants also "tighten" leaky auxotrophic mutations that permit wild-type cells to grow in the absence of the appropriate amino acid. All of these phenotypes are also exhibited by gcn mutants affecting general control of amino acid biosynthesis. In addition, the crl mutants are all hypersensitive to hygromycin B, an aminoglycoside antibiotic that stimulates translational misreading. The crl mutations also suppress one nonsense mutation which is phenotypically suppressed by hygromycin B. Many crl mutants are also osmotically sensitive. These are phenotypes which the crl mutations have in common with previously isolated omnipotent suppressors. We suggest that the the crl mutations all affect the fidelity of protein translation.