I am having a bugger of a time getting my yeasts to mate.
I have a large number of matings to do (~600), and have been going
about it by making 1cm squared smears, mixing together gobs
from the two haploid strains (twenty to a plate.) I
just leave the plates at 30 degrees and have a look after two
days time. On some plates, it works wonderfully - each smear
has lots of little colonies comming up. On others it is patchy -
some smears have a few colonies, others have none. And on
many plates, no diploid colonies come up. I am using complete
minimal dropout medium. Does the growth medium make a difference?
Does temperature make a difference? Should I play violins to them?
Any help would be appreciated,
Michael Kyba
