Functional characterization of the S. pombe genome

The fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe is an important model organism for studying various aspects of biology. Sequencing of the S. pombe genome revealed almost 5.000 open reading frames including many genes with significant similarity to human disease genes. The functions of many open reading frames are unknown. A systematic whole-genome approach is required to determine their function. The KRIBB-Bioneer-CRUK consortium has almost completed the systematic gene knock-out strain collection for fission yeast and is currently analysing the phenotypes of generated mutants. However, some genes could not be deleted using a conventional knock-out technique. We have recently developed an efficient knockout strategy based on plasmids that contain large regions homologous to the target gene. In this project, we used this knockout strategy to delete genes which could not be deleted by the KRIBB-Bioneer-CRUK consortium. This allowed us to create almost complete collection of fission yeast knockout strains which will be a valuable tool for analysis of the fission yeast biology.