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Research on successor parties in the former Soviet Union has mostly focused on leftist parties and paid little attention to their interplay with centrist forces which equally have their roots in the Soviet system. This article examines the development of both leftist and centrist successor parties in post-Soviet Ukraine. After consideration of the role of legacies of the old regime as well as the current legal and societal framework, the evolution of leftist parties and the so-called parties of power is explored. The analysis shows that the leftists were weakened by internal splits and a partial inability to modernize. But equally important was the logic of power preservation in the Leonid Kuchma regime, which promoted the formalization of the party of power and crowded out the leftist competitors.

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Lack of gene-function analyses tools limits studying the biology of Hanseniaspora uvarum, one of the most abundant yeasts on grapes and in must. We investigated a rapid PCR-based gene targeting approach for one-step gene replacement in this diploid yeast. To this end, we generated and validated two synthetic antibiotic resistance genes, pFA-hygXL and pFA-clnXL, providing resistance against hygromycin and nourseothricin, respectively, for use with H. uvarum. Addition of short flanking-homology regions of 56–80 bp to these selection markers via PCR was sufficient to promote gene targeting. We report here the deletion of the H. uvarum LEU2 and LYS2 genes with these marker genes via two rounds of consecutive transformations, each resulting in the generation of auxotrophic strains (leu2/leu2; lys2/lys2). The hereby constructed leucine auxotrophic leu2/leu2 strain was subsequently complemented in a targeted manner, thereby further validating this approach. PCR-based gene targeting in H. uvarum was less efficient than in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. However, this approach, combined with the availability of two marker genes, provides essential tools for directed gene manipulations in H. uvarum.