Effects of aneuploidy on cellular physiology and cell division in haploid yeast.

Aneuploidy is a condition frequently found in tumor cells but how it affects cellular physiology is not known. We have characterized one aspect of aneuploidy, the gain of extra chromosomes. We created a collection of haploid yeast strains that each bear an extra copy of one or more of almost all of the yeast chromosomes. Their characterization revealed that aneuploid strains share a number of phenotypes, including defects in cell cycle progression, increased glucose uptake and increased sensitivity to conditions interfering with protein synthesis and protein folding. These phenotypes were observed only in strains carrying additional yeast genes indicating that they reflect the consequences of additional transcription and translation as well as the resulting imbalances in cellular protein composition. We conclude that aneuploidy causes not only a proliferative disadvantage but also a set of phenotypes that is independent of the identity of the individual extra chromosomes. Keywords: CGH, gene expression This series of microarrays compares yeast strains carrying extra chromosomes to wt yeast with normal chromosome content. Both DNA/CGH and gene expression comparisons were done, as noted. In some experiments, biological replicates were performed as noted. Reference wt nucleic acid was most commonly labeled with Cy3. Experiments labeled as "swap" have the wt reference nucleic acid labeled with Cy5, and ratio values for these experiments are reported as Cy3/Cy5.