Interactions between the yeast mitochondrial and nuclear genomes: isogenic suppressive and hypersuppressive petites differ in their resistance to the alkaloid lycorine

Summary In a previous paper we have shown that the alkaloid lycorine inhibits growth of rho⁺, mit^- and rho^-, strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, whereas strains devoid of mitochondrial DNA (rho^o) are resistant to more than 200 g/ml of the alkaloid. In this report we show that hypersuppressive petites are almost as resistant as rho^o mutants, whereas isogenic rho^- petites, which have retained tained longer segments of the genome, are sensitive to the drug.