THE GLN1 LOCUS OF SACCHAROMYCES CEREVISIAE ENCODES GLUTAMINE SYNTHETASE

Aaron P. Mitchell ¹

¹ Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

Among 41 yeast glutamine auxotrophs, complementation analysis defined a single gene, GLN1, on chromosome 16 between MAK3 and MAK6. Half of the alleles fell into two intragenic complementation classes. No clustering of complementing alleles was found in a fine structure map. Altered glutamine synthetase subunits, including nonsense fragments and charge variants, were identified in several of the mutants, indicating that GLN1 is the structural gene for this enzyme. Negative complementation was observed for almost every allele associated with a protein product and all gln1/+ heterozygotes displayed reduced susceptibility to ammonia repression of the remaining glutamine synthetase activity. This latter observation is explained by the hypothesis that ammonia represses the enzyme only through its metabolism to glutamine. A basis for the two gln1 complementation classes is proposed.

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