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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, April 2008, p. 2129-2134, Vol. 74, No. 7
0099-2240/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.01840-07
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Construction of Sterile ime1{Delta}-Transgenic Saccharomyces cerevisiae Wine Yeasts Unable To Disseminate in Nature{triangledown}

Manuel Ramírez* and Jesús Ambrona

Departamento de Microbiología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Extremadura, 06071 Badajoz, Spain

Received 8 August 2007/ Accepted 24 January 2008

The use of new transgenic yeasts in industry carries a potential environmental risk because their dispersal, introducing new artificial genetic combinations into nature, could have unpredictable consequences. This risk could be avoided by using sterile transgenic yeasts that are unable to sporulate and mate with wild yeasts. These sterile yeasts would not survive the annual cyclic harvesting periods, being condemned to disappear in the wineries and vineyards in less than a year. We have constructed new ime1{Delta} wine yeasts that are unable to sporulate and mate, bear easy-to-detect genetic markers, and quickly disappear in grape must fermentation immediately after sporulation of the yeast population. These sterile yeasts maintained the same biotechnological properties as their parent yeasts without any detectable deleterious effect of the ime1{Delta} mutation. These yeasts are therefore interesting biotechnologically for food industry applications and for genetically modified microorganism environmental monitoring studies.


* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Departamento de Microbiología (Antiguo Rectorado), Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Extremadura, 06071 Badajoz, Spain. Phone: 34 924289426. Fax: 34 924289427. E-mail: mramirez{at}unex.es

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 1 February 2008.


Applied and Environmental Microbiology, April 2008, p. 2129-2134, Vol. 74, No. 7
0099-2240/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.01840-07
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.