Isolation of a yeast centromere and construction of functional small circular chromosomes

Abstract
The centromeric DNA (CEN3) from yeast chromosome III was isolated on a 1.6 kbase-pair segment of DNA located near the centromere-linked CDC10 locus of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. When present on a plasmid carrying a yeast chromosomal replicator, CEN3 enables that plasmid to function as a chromosome both mitotically and meiotically. Minichromosomes containing CEN3 are stable in mitosis and segregate as ordinary yeast chromosomes in the 1st and 2nd meiotic divisions.