Summary

Evolution and genome stabilization have mostly been studied on the Saccharomyces hybrids isolated from natural and alcoholic fermentation environments. Genetic and pheno-typic properties have usually been compared to the laboratory and reference strains, as the true ancestors of the natural hybrid yeasts are unknown. In this way the exact impact of different parental fractions on the genome organization or metabolic activity of the hybrid yeasts is difficult to resolve completely. In the present work the evolution of geno- and phenotypic properties is studied in the interspecies hybrids created by the cross-breeding of S. cerevisiae with S. uvarum or S. kudriavzevii auxotrophic mutants. We hypothesized that the extent of genomic alterations in S. cerevisiae × S. uvarum and S. cerevisiae × S. kudriav-zevii should affect the physiology of their F1 offspring in different ways. Our results, ob-tained by amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) genotyping and karyotyping analyses, showed that both subgenomes of the S. cerevisiae x S. uvarum and of S. cerevisiae × S. kudriavzevii hybrids experienced various modifications. However, the S. cerevisiae × S. kudriavzevii F1 hybrids underwent more severe genomic alterations than the S. cerevisiae × S. uvarum ones. Generation of the new genotypes also influenced the physiological per