Abstract
The genetic basis of ethanol tolerance was investigated in homothallic and heterothallic ethanol-tolerant wine yeasts. All strains were diploid or nearly diploid and able to sporulate. Some possessed recessive lethal alleles. Their meiotic segregation with regard to ethanol tolerance indicates that recessive alleles able to decrease ethanol tolerance were present in the heterozygosis state in the parental wine strains. The number of genes able to spontaneously mutate to alleles of ethanol sensitivity were greater than these found in auxotrophic phenotypes. In homothallic strains segregation in the second generation has to be explained by the simultaneous presence of aneuploidy and ethanol-sensitive alleles. In non-isogenic strains, genes involved in ethanol tolerance had complementary functions. Although a fairly high number of genes were involved at the various tolerance levels of the wine and laboratory strains, different genes limited growth at different ethanol concentrations indicating that ethanol inhibition is the result of the inhibition of different cellular functions with increasing ethanol concentrations.
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