Genetic Transformation of Neurospora tetrasperma, Demonstration of Repeat-Induced Point Mutation (RIP) in Self-Crosses and a Screen for Recessive RIP-Defective MutantsThis article is dedicated to the memory of C. Vaishnavi.Sequence data from this article have been deposited with the EMBL/GenBank Data Libraries under accession nos. AY256902, AY256903, AY490236, AY490237, AY490238, AY490239, AY526722, AY526723, AY526724, and AY536859, AY536860, AY536861.

Abstract

Abstract The pseudohomothallic fungus Neurospora tetrasperma is naturally resistant to the antibiotic hygromycin. We discovered that mutation of its erg-3 (sterol C-14 reductase) gene confers a hygromycin-sensitive phenotype that can be used to select transformants on hygromycin medium by complementation with the N. crassa erg-3+ and bacterial hph genes. Cotransformation of hph with PCR-amplified DNA of other genes enabled us to construct strains duplicated for the amplified DNA. Using transformation we constructed self-fertile strains that were homoallelic for an ectopic erg-3+ transgene and a mutant erg-3 allele at the endogenous locus. Self-crosses of these strains yielded erg-3 mutant ascospores that produced colonies with the characteristic morphology on Vogel's sorbose agar described previously for erg-3 mutants of N. crassa. The mutants were generated by repeat-induced point mutation (RIP), a genome defense process that causes numerous G:C to A:T mutations in duplicated DNA sequences. Homozygosity for novel recessive RIP-deficient mutations was signaled by self-crosses of erg-3-duplication strains that fail to produce erg-3 mutant progeny. Using this assay we isolated a UV-induced mutant with a putative partial RIP defect. RIP-induced mutants were isolated in rid-1 and sad-1, which are essential genes, respectively, for RIP and another genome defense mechanism called meiotic silencing by unpaired DNA.