Yeast Artificial-Chromosome (YAC) Cloning Systems

Yeast artificial-chromosome (YAC) cloning systems are used to clone large contiguous segments of DNA from any organism into suitable vectors in such a way that the recombinants can be transformed into yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae ) cells, where they are stably propagated. The basic strategy for producing artificial chromosomes in yeast was first described in 1983 by Murray and Szostak (1 ). In 1987, Burke et al. (2 ) demonstrated that artificial chromosomes in yeast were useful for cloning very large segments of exogenous DNA.