Glycolysis Mutants in Saccharomyces Cerevisiae

Mutants have been isolated in S. cerevisiae with the phenotype of growth on pyruvate but not on glucose, or growth on rich medium with pyruvate but inhibition by glucose. Screening of mutagenized cultures was either without an enrichment step, or after enrichment using the antibiotic netropsin (Young et al. 1976) or inositol starvation (Henry, Donahue and Culbertson 1975). One class of mutants lacked pyruvate kinase (pyk), another class had all the enzymes of glycolysis, and one mutant lacked phosphoglucose isomerase (pgi, Maitra 1971). Partial reversion of pyruvate kinase mutants on rich medium containing glucose gave double mutants now also lacking hexokinase (hxk), phosphofructokinase (fk), or several enzymes of glycolysis (gcr). In diploids the mutations were recessive. pyk, pgi, pfk, and gcr segregated 2:2 from their wild-type alleles. PYK hxk, PYK pfk, and PYK gcr segregrants grew on glucose.