REVIEW PAPER Yeast competence for exogenous DNA uptake: towards understanding its genetic component Petar Tomev Mitrikeski Received: 18 December 2012 / Accepted: 14 March 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract The demonstration of spontaneous yeast competence shows that artificial transformation rests on naturally occurring cellular processes. Such natural competence is either biologically mediated or envi- ronmentally induced. For instance, wild yeast might be transformed through conjugation by cell-to- cell contact mediated either by Escherichia coli or Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Moreover, natural com- petence can be enhanced by mechanical and physio- logical mechanisms. On the other hand, artificial yeast competence is usually achieved by biological, chem- ical and physical manipulations. These eliminate or weaken natural obstacles blocking the way of the transforming DNA in order to mitigate its entrance into the cell (biological and chemical approach) or simply to bridge it by either electrical or biolistic force (physical). Thus yeast competence is controlled by intrinsic (genetic) and external (environmental) fac- tors. Both intrinsic and external parameters affecting yeast competence were scrutinized leading to the identification of genes and biological processes participating in the phenomenon. Therefore natural yeast competence is a complex, quantitative genetic trait which may have allowed yeast to better adapt over evolutionary times. Keywords Yeast Á Saccharomyces Á Transformation Á Transfection Á Conjugation Á Natural competence Introduction Genetic transformation is operationally defined as a process of introducing genetic material (i.e. DNA) into a cell that results in a heritable change. 1 Yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is an important model organism in both basic and applied genetic research. Consequently, its stable transformation is a distin- guished part of contemporary genetics with numerous and versatile applications (Orr-Weaver et al. 1981, 1983; Gunge 1983; Rothstein 1991; Akada 2002; Kawai et al. 2010). However, to take up exogenous DNA yeast cell must first be rendered competent. Usually artificial approaches, achieving excellent transforming efficiency due to highly elaborated P. T. Mitrikeski Institute for Research and Development of Sustainable Ecosystems, FSB-CTT, Ivana Luc ˇic ´a 5, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia P. T. Mitrikeski (&) Laboratory for Evolutionary Genetics, Division of Molecular Biology, Institute Rud¯er Bos ˇkovic ´, Bijenic ˇka cesta 54, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia e-mail: pmitrik@irb.hr 1 Interestingly, this definition might appear obsolete since proteins have been also found to transform yeast cell in a heritable fashion; see Fink (2005) and accompanying literature therein. 123 Antonie van Leeuwenhoek DOI 10.1007/s10482-013-9905-5