A Growth-Based Screening System for Hexose Transporters in Yeast

As the simplest eukaryotic model system, the unicellular yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is ideally suited for quick and simple functional studies as well as for high-throughput screening. We generated a strain deficient for all endogenous hexose transporters, which has been successfully used to clone, characterize, and engineer carbohydrate transporters from different source organisms. Here we present basic protocols for handling this strain and characterizing sugar transporters heterologously expressed in it.