Physical localization of the flocculation gene FLO1 on chromosome I of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

The genetics of flocculation in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae are poorly understood despite the importance of this property for strains used in industry. To be able to study the regulation of flocculation in yeast, one of the genes involved, FLO1, has been partially cloned. The identity of the gene was confirmed by the non-flocculent phenotype of cells in which the C-terminal part of the gene had been replaced by the URA3 gene. Southern blots and genetic crosses showed that the URA3 gene had integrated at the expected position on chromosome I. A region of approximately 2 kb in the middle of the FLO1 gene was consistently deleted during propagation in Escherichia coli and could not be isolated. Plasmids containing the incomplete gene, however, were still able to cause weak flocculation in a non-flocculent strain. The 3' end of the FLO1 gene was localized at approximately 24 kb from the right end of chromosome I, 20 kb centromere-proximal to PHO11. Most of the newly isolated chromosome I sequences also hybridized to chromosome VIII DNA, thus extending the homology between the right end of chromosome I and chromosome VIII to approximately 28 kb.