Rapid and highly efficient mating-type switching of Saccharomyces cerevisiae enables a wide variety of genetic manipulations, such as the construction of strains, for instance, isogenic haploid pairs of both mating-types, diploids and polyploids. We used the CRISPR/Cas9 system to generate a double-strand break at the MAT locus and, in a single cotransformation, both haploid and diploid cells were switched to the specified mating-type at ∼80% efficiency. The mating-type of strains carrying either rod or ring chromosome III were switched, including those lacking HMLα and HMRa cryptic mating loci. Furthermore, we transplanted the synthetic yeast chromosome V to build a haploid polysynthetic chromosome strain by using this method together with an endoreduplication intercross strategy. The CRISPR/Cas9 mating-type switching method will be useful in building the complete synthetic yeast (Sc2.0) genome. Importantly, it is a generally useful method to build polyploids of a defined genotype and generally expedites strain construction, for example, in the construction of fully a/a/α/α isogenic tetraploids.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been successfully applied in identifying single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with body mass index (BMI) and coronary heart disease (CAD). However, the SNPs to date can only explain a small percentage of the genetic variances of traits. Here, we applied a genetic pleiotropic conditional false discovery rate (cFDR) method that combines summary statistic p values from different multi-center GWAS datasets, to detect common genetic variants associated with these two traits. The enrichment of SNPs associated with BMI and CAD was assessed by conditional Q-Q plots and the common variants were identified by the cFDR method. By applying the cFDR level of 0.05, 7 variants were identified to be associated with CAD (2 variants being novel), 34 variants associated with BMI (11 variants being novel), and 3 variants associated with both BMI and CAD (2 variants being novel). The SNP rs653178 (ATXN2) is noteworthy as this variant was replicated in an independent analysis. SNP rs12411886 (CNNM2) and rs794356 (HIP1) were of note as the annotated genes may be associated with processes that are functionally important in lipid metabolism. In conclusion, the cFDR method identified novel variants associated with BMI and/or CAD by effectively incorporating different GWAS datasets.

In the title compound, C(28)H(30)BrN(3)O(4), the molecules are linked by C-H...Br and N-H...O hydrogen bonds into one-dimensional chains, which are arranged into a three-dimensional network through a combination of C-H...O hydrogen bonds and two kinds of pi-pi interactions between the benzene rings of the anthraquinone units.

The title complex, [CoCl2(C17H15NO2)2], has twofold rotation symmetry, and the geometry at the Co centre is a slightly distorted tetrahedron composed of two N atoms from two trans‐2‐[2‐(4‐methoxyphenyl)­ethenyl]‐5‐methyl­benzoxazole ligands and two Cl− anions. The two organic ligands are arranged in reverse directions to give a head‐to‐tail structure. The two benzoxazole planes of these two ligands are almost perpendicular to each other, with a dihedral angle of 86.4 (4)°, while the corresponding angle for the two methoxyphenyl planes is 74.5 (4)°.