A general life-death selection strategy for dissecting protein functions

Clonal selection strategies are central tools in molecular biology. We developed a general strategy to dissect protein functions through positive and negative clonal selection for protein-protein interactions, based on a protein-fragment complementation assay using Saccharomyces cerevisiae cytosine deaminase as a reporter. We applied this method to mutational or chemical disruption of protein-protein interactions in yeast and to dissection of the functions of an allosterically activated transcription factor, Swi6.