I’m excited that the collaborative project between me and Joe Armstrong from Maitreya Dunham’s lab is out on biorxiv!
This is an expected discovery when using URA3 as a reporter gene to assay mutation rates and spectra using large population of cells. We found some mutants that are able to survive on 5-FOA without URA3 mutations which led to the discovery of an interesting category of URA6 mutants that can survive in various conditions where WT and URA3 mutants can’t.