Formamide Sensitivity: A Novel Conditional Phenotype in Yeast

Yeast mutants unable to grow in the presence of 3% formamide have been isolated in parallel with mutants sensitive to either 37° or 6% ethanol. The number of formamide-sensitive mutations that affect different genes that can be identified from yeast cells is at least as large as the number of thermosensitive or ethanol-sensitive mutations. These mutations are of two types: those that are sensitive to formamide, temperature and/or ethanol simultaneously; and those that are specific for formamide sensitivity and show no temperature or ethanol sensitivity phenotype. Those genes susceptible to giving rise to formamide-sensitive alleles include the structural gene for DNA ligase, CDC9, and the structural gene for arginine permease, CAN1. The results indicate that formamide sensitivity can be used as a novel conditional phenotype for mutations on both essential and nonessential genes. This work also confirms that ethanol-sensitivity can be used as a conditional phenotype to identify mutations in at least as many genes as those susceptible to temperature or formamide sensitive mutations.