High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A yeast artificial chromosome (YAC) is a vector used to clone DNA fragments larger than 100 kb and up to 3000 kb. YACs are useful for the physical mapping of complex genomes and for the cloning of large genes. First described in 1983 by Murray and Szostak, a YAC is an artificially constructed chromosome and contains the telomeric, centromeric, and replication originsequences named autonomous replicating sequence needed for replication and preservation in yeast cells. A YAC is built using an initial circular plasmid, which is typically broken into two linear molecules using restriction enzymes; DNA ligase is then used to ligate a sequence or gene of interest between the two linear molecules, forming a single large linear piece of DNA.