Use of novel selenomethionine-resistant yeast to produce selenomethionyl protein suitable for structural analysis.

Yeast is widely used to determine the tertiary structure of eukaryotic proteins, because of its ability to undergo post-translational modifications such as glycosylation. A mutant lacking S-adenosylmethionine synthesis has been reported as a suitable host for producing selenomethionine derivatives, which can help solve phase problems in protein crystallography. However, the mutant required external addition of S-adenosylmethionine for cell proliferation.