Suppose that you have a particular S. cerevisiae mutant strain that cannot make the amino acid leucine. Will the strain grow on a YPD plate? What about a SD plate? How could you modify the SD plate to allow this strain to grow?

The amino acids are important for the growth of almost all the organisms from the yeast to humans. While culturing yeast at the lab conditions, proper growth media is required.

The yeast is not able to make leucine. When this yeast is grown in the YPD plate, the growth of yeast is supported. The YPD consists of peptones, glucose and yeast extract. This media is enriched with all the components required for the yeast growth. The SD plate is also known as synthetic plate  that do not contain the essential amino acids and consists of only nitrogenous bases. The mutant yeast will unable to grown in this media as leucine is not available. The mutant can be grown on this plate if the plate is supplied with the external media consisting of leucine and other essential amino acids.