Zeocin induced genomic instaiblity in yeast

Yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been widely used as a model system for studying physiological and pharmacological action of small-molecular drugs. Here, a heterozygous diploid S. cerevisiae strain QSS4 was generated to determine whether drugs could induce chromosomal instability by determining the frequency of mitotic recombination. In combination of a custom SNP microarray, the patterns of chromosomal instability induced by drugs could also be explored at a whole genome level in QSS4. Using this system, we found Zeocin (a member of bleomycin family) treatment resulted in hundreds-fold higher rate of genomic alterations, including aneuploidy, loss of heterozygosity (LOH), and chromosomal rearrangement.