title: Construction of sterile ime1Delta-transgenic Saccharomyces cerevisiae wine yeasts unable to disseminate in nature.
abstract: The use of new transgenic yeasts in industry carries a potential environmental risk because their dispersal, introducing new artificial genetic combinations into nature, could have unpredictable consequences. This risk could be avoided by using sterile transgenic yeasts that are unable to sporulate and mate with wild yeasts. These sterile yeasts would not survive the annual cyclic harvesting periods, being condemned to disappear in the wineries and vineyards in less than a year. We have constructed new ime1Delta wine yeasts that are unable to sporulate and mate, bear easy-to-detect genetic markers, and quickly disappear in grape must fermentation immediately after sporulation of the yeast population. These sterile yeasts maintained the same biotechnological properties as their parent yeasts without any detectable deleterious effect of the ime1Delta mutation. These yeasts are therefore interesting biotechnologically for food industry applications and for genetically modified microorganism environmental monitoring studies.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Microbiología (Antiguo Rectorado), Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Extremadura, 06071 Badajoz, Spain. mramirez@unex.es
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ramírez
authors.forename: Jesús
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ambrona
mesh_terms: D005285:Fermentation / Q000235:genetics; D005516:Food Microbiology; D005818:Genetic Engineering / Q000379:methods; D006720:Homozygote; D019656:Loss of Heterozygosity; D009687:Nuclear Proteins / Q000172:deficiency*; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000235:genetics / Q000254:growth & development / Q000378:metabolism*; D029701:Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins; D014157:Transcription Factors / Q000172:deficiency*; D019076:Transgenes; D014920:Wine / Q000382:microbiology*; D015003:Yeasts
chemical_list: C080326:IME1 protein, S cerevisiae; D009687:Nuclear Proteins; D029701:Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins; D014157:Transcription Factors