Incompatibilities involving yeast mismatch repair genes: a role for genetic modifiers and implications for disease penetrance and variation in genomic mutation rates.

ABSTRACT: Genetic background effects underlie the penetrance of most genetically determined phenotypes, including human diseases. To explore how such effects can modify a mutant phenotype in a genetically tractable system, we examined an incompatibility involving the MLH1 and PMS1 mismatch repair genes using a large population sample of geographically and ecologically diverse Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains. The mismatch repair incompatibility segregates into naturally occurring yeast strains, with no strain bearing the deleterious combination. In assays measuring the mutator phenotype conferred by different combinations of MLH1 and PMS1 from these strains, we observed a mutator phenotype only in combinations predicted to be incompatible. Surprisingly, intragenic modifiers could be mapped that spec

SUBMITTER: Demogines A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2413424 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature