Genome-Wide Quantitative Fitness Analysis (QFA) of Yeast Cultures

Abstract

We provide a detailed protocol for robot-assisted, genome-wide measurement of fitness in the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae using Quantitative Fitness Analysis (QFA). We first describe how we construct thousands of double or triple mutant yeast strains in parallel using Synthetic Genetic Array (SGA) procedures. Strains are inoculated onto solid agar surfaces by liquid spotting followed by repeated photography of agar plates. Growth curves are constructed and the fitness of each strain is estimated. Robot-assisted QFA, can be used to identify genetic interactions and chemical sensitivity/resistance in genome-wide experiments, but QFA can also be used in smaller scale, manual workflows.

Keywords: Fitness; Genetic interaction; Genome-wide; Growth curve; High-throughput; Image analysis; Population model; QFA; Quantitative; Robotic; SGA; Yeast.