McClean: Yeast Nomenclature
'S. cerevisiae' researchers have a systematic approach for describing genotypes of yeast strains. You need to follow this system when writing papers, protocols, and when entering yeast strains into the lab database.
Much of this information is taken from the "Methods in Yeast Genetics" book from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Nomenclature
Naming Yeast Strains
Now that you've become (somewhat) comfortable working with yeast in the lab,
it's time to master some of the jargon associated with yeast…
S. cerevisiae researchers have adopted a systematic approach for describing the
genotypes of their yeast strains. Genes that have been studied or characterized in some
way often have a "common" name ascribed to them, and this name generally consists of
three letters and a number. For example, LEU2 refers to a gene encoding an enzyme in
the leucine biosynthetic pathway, and PDR3 refers to a gene encoding a transcription
factor involved in pleiotropic drug resistance. The table below describes the basics of
yeast genetic nomenclature which is always typed up in italics.
Wild-type alleles are written in all caps LEU2
And sometimes with a "plus" sign LEU2+
Recessive mutant alleles are written in lower case arg2
And may include an allele number arg2-9
Dominant mutant alleles are written in all caps
And should include an allele number PDR3-11
Or other notation to indicate it is not wild-type. OLIr
Besides its "common" name, each gene has a systematic name that refers to its
precise position in the genome…
YNL323w
This is a yeast gene
On chromosome XIV (N is the 14th letter in the alphabet)
This gene is on the left arm of the chromosome
It is the 323rd gene away from the centromere
It is on the "Watson" strand
I