best-barcode-enabled-sequencing-of-tetrads

BEST: Barcode Enabled Sequencing of Tetrads

Tetrad analysis is a valuable tool for yeast genetics, but the laborious manual nature of the process has hindered its application on large scales. ...

Pacific Northwest Diabetes Research Institute

Tetrad analysis has been a gold-standard genetic technique for several decades. Unfortunately, the need to manually isolate, disrupt and space tetrads has relegated its application to small-scale studies and limited its integration with high-throughput DNA sequencing technologies. We have developed a rapid, high-throughput method, called barcode-enabled sequencing of tetrads (BEST), that uses (i) a meiosis-specific GFP fusion protein to isolate tetrads by FACS and (ii) molecular barcodes that are read during genotyping to identify spores derived from the same tetrad. Maintaining tetrad information allows accurate inference of missing genetic markers and full genotypes of missing (and presumably nonviable) individuals. An individual researcher was able to isolate over 3,000 yeast tetrads in 3 h, an output equivalent to that of almost 1 month of manual dissection. BEST is transferable to other microorganisms for which meiotic mapping is significantly more laborious.

High-throughput tetrad analysis.

The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is important for human food production and as a model organism for biological research. The genetic diversity contained in the global population of yeast strains represents a valuable resource for a number of fields, including genetics, bioengineering, and studies of evolution and population structure. Here, we apply a multiplexed, reduced genome sequencing strategy (restriction site-associated sequencing or RAD-seq) to genotype a large collection of S. cerevisiae strains isolated from a wide range of geographical locations and environmental niches. The method permits the sequencing of the same 1% of all genomes, producing a multiple sequence alignment of 116,880 bases across 262 strains. We find diversity among these strains is principally organized by geography, with European, North American, Asian, and African/S. E. Asian populations defining the major axes of genetic variation. At a finer scale, small groups of strains from cacao, olives, and sake are defined by unique variants not present in other strains. One population, containing strains from a variety of fermentations, exhibits high levels of heterozygosity and a mixture of alleles from European and Asian populations, indicating an admixed origin for this group. We propose a model of geographic differentiation followed by human-associated admixture, primarily between European and Asian populations and more recently between European and North American populations. The large collection of genotyped yeast strains characterized here will provide a useful resource for the broad community of yeast researchers.

Catherine L. Ludlow

Pacific Northwest Diabetes Research Institute

BEST: Barcode Enabled Sequencing of Tetrads