Isolation of SPO12-1 and SPO13-1 from a natural variant of yeast that undergoes a single meiotic division.

ATCC4117 is a strain of S. cerevisiae that undergoes a single nuclear division during sporulation to produce asci containing two diploid ascopores (Grewal and Miller 1972). All clones derived from these spores are sporulation-capable and, like the parental strain, form two-spored asci. In this paper, we describe the genetic analysis of ATCC4117. In tetraploid hybrids of vegetative cells of the ATCC4117 diploid and a/a or alpha/alpha diploids, the production of two-spored asci is recessive. From these tetraploids, we have isolated two recessive alleles, designated spo12-1 and spo13-1, each of which alone results in the production of asci with two diploid or near-diploid spores. These alleles are unlinked and segregate as single nuclear genes. spo12-1 is approximately 22 cM from its centromere; spo13-1 has been localized to within 1 cM of arg4 on chromosome VIII. This analysis also revealed that ATCC4117 carries a diploidization gene allelic to or closely linked to HO, modifiers that reduce the number of haploid spores per ascus and alleles affecting the total level of sporulation.