Genetics of oxidative phosphorylation: mitochondrial loci determining ossamycin-, venturicidin- and oligomycin-resistance in yeast.

With a view towards identifying new ATPase loci on the mitochondrial genome a large number of oligomycin-, ossamycin- and venturicidin-resistant mutants were isolated after MnCl2 mutagenesis. The mutants were subjected to mass-screens which divided them into different cross-resistance phenotype-classes and also distinguished the common OLI1 mutations from the mutations at all other loci. Allelism tests between examples of the different classes of phenotype indicated that the majority of mutations in the population mapped at the previously known loci OLI1, OLI2, OLI3, and OLI4. Mutations conferring specific ossamycin resistance defined two new loci, namely OSS1 and OSS2 which are linked to the OLI2 and OLI1 loci respectively. A few rare mutations comprise a new locus OLI5 which is linked to the OLI1 locus (12.6% total recombination). In conclusion we can now say that that there are two unlinked segments of the mitochondrial genome, each of which is composed of several distinct, genetically-linked loci. One segment contains the OLI1, OLI3, OLI5 and OSS2 loci and the other the OLI2, OLI4 and OSS1 loci. The phenotypically-distinguishable mutations described herein should facilitate fine-structure mapping of these two segments.