Hereditary respiration deficiency in Saccharomycodes ludwigii.

Saccharomycodes ludwigii, supposed to be "petite-negative," gave rise to respiration-deficient mutants when acriflavine and ultraviolet irradiation, respectively, were applied to this yeast, strain IFO 1194. The frequency of such mutants was very low as compared with that in Saccharomyces cervisiae and other "petite-positive" yeasts. Cytochrome composition was characterized by spectrophotometry at the temperature of liquid nitrogen. The respiratory mutants examined contained cytochrome c unaltered in quality and quantity. Cytochrome b was often present only in small amounts though never absent, while cytochrome a + a3 was either present or absent. The respiratory mutants could form zygotes after conjugation with a wild-type culture of opposite mating type (alpha vs. a). The hybridization and segregation analysis of spore tetrads showed the inheritance of respiratory mutant character to be either Mendelian or non-Mendelian and similar to that of pet (nuclear) and rho- (cytoplasmic) mutants, respectively, in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.