Repair of heteroduplex plasmid DNA after transformation into Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Abstract

Purified heteroduplex plasmid DNAs containing 8- or 12-base-pair insertion mismatches or AC or CT substitution mismatches were used to transform Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Two insertion mismatches, separated by 943 base pairs, were repaired independently of each other at least 55% of the time. This suggested that repair tracts were frequently shorter than 1 kilobase. The two insertion mismatches were repaired with different efficiencies. Comparison of the repair efficiency of one mismatched site with or without an adjacent mismatch suggests that mismatches promote their own repair and can influence the repair of neighboring mismatches. When two different plasmids containing single-insertion mismatches were transformed into S. cerevisiae cells, a slight preference towards insertion was detected among repair products of one of the two plasmids, while no repair preference was detected among transformants with the second plasmid.