Size Selection Identifies New Genes That Regulate Saccharomyces cerevisiae Cell Proliferation

A centrifugation procedure to enrich for enlarged cells has been used to isolate temperature-sensitive cdc mutants of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Among these mutants are strains containing mutations that arrest proliferation at the regulatory step start. These new start mutations define two previously unidentified genes, CDC67 and CDC68, and reveal that a previously identified gene, DNA33 (here termed CDC65), can harbour start mutations. Each new start mutation permits significant biosynthetic activity after transfer of mutant cells to the non-permissive temperature. The cdc68-1 start mutation causes arrest of cell proliferation without inhibition of mating ability, while the cdc65-1 and cdc67-1 mutations inhibit zygote formation and successful conjugation. The identification of new start genes by a novel selection procedure suggests that the catalog of genes that influence start is large.