Basic yeast methods

The purpose of this article is to give practical help to the new yeast worker from the day when the first yeast samples arrive in the laboratory up until the first experiments. Basically, this involves the application of standard microbiological procedures to yeast, including growth of yeast cultures on plates and in liquid culture medium and storage of yeast. However, there are many small details that are important for getting the best results even from the simplest procedures, such as replica plating or growing a log phase culture. Step-by-step methods for determination of a yeast genotype, including the mating type, are described. The first step in any experiment with yeast is to obtain strains with appropriate genotypes. Thus, a procedure for meiotic recombination of genes is described. (C) 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.