Ultraviolet-induced reversion of cyc1 alleles in radiation-sensitive strains of yeast. III. rev3 mutant strains.

The role of the REV3 gene function in UV-induced mutagensis in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been examined by determining the reversion of 12 well-defined cyc1 mutations in diploid strains homozygous for the rev3--1 or rev3--3 allele. The 12 cyc1 alleles include one ochre, one amber, four initiation, two proline missense, and four frameshift mutations. We find that the rev3 mutations reduce the frequency of UV-induced reversion of all of the cyc1 alleles, though different classes of alleles respond to a different extent. These results imply that the REV3 gene function is required for the production of a wide variety of mutational events, though probably not all, and show that each of the three REV loci have different mutational phenotypes. Such diverse phenotypes are not predicted by the unitary model for bacterial mutagenesis (CAILLET-FAUQUET, DEFAIS and RADMAN 1977; WITKIN 1976), suggesting that this is at best an incomplete description of eukaryotic mutagenesis.