In the year 2001 a collection of yeast strains will be completed that are deleted in the 6000 open reading frames selected as putative genes by the initial bioinformatic analysis of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome. The collection was produced by the transatlantic yeast gene deletion project, a collaboration involving researchers in the USA, Canada and Europe. The European effort was part of EUROFAN (European Functional Analysis Network) where some of the strains could feed into various functional analysis nodes dealing with specific areas of cell biology. With approximately 40% of human genes involved in heritable disease having a homologue in yeast and with the use of yeast in various drug discovery strategies, not least due to the dramatic increase in fungal infections, these strains will be valuable in trans-genomic studies and in specialised interest studies in individual laboratories. A detailed analysis of the project by the consortium is in preparation, here we discuss the yeast strains, reported findings and approaches to using this resource.