Molecular cloning and physical analysis of an 8.2 kb segment of chromosome XI of Saccharomyces cerevisiae reveals five tightly linked genes.

The nucleotide sequence of 6472 base pairs of an 8.2 kb segment of Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome XI has been determined. The sequence contains a cluster of four long open reading frames (ORF) designated YKL2, YKL3, YKL4 and TGL1 in the same orientation, flanked at the 5'-end by a divergent incomplete ORF (YKL1). Transcription and Southern analysis of the four complete ORFs showed that all are expressed and are present in single copy on the haploid genome. The average codon adaptation index of the coding regions is approximately 0.2, suggesting that these genes are lowly expressed. The upstream regions of all four genes as well as the YKL1 ORF contain putative promoter elements previously found to be characteristic of nuclear genes encoding mitochondrial proteins. Significant sequence similarities were found between the YKL3 protein and Escherichia coli ribosomal protein S2 as well as between the TGL1 protein and triglyceride lipases from rat salivary gland and human gastric tissue. The 3'-end of the 6472 bp nucleotide sequence overlaps with the upstream region of the previously identified CTK1 gene, encoding the largest subunit of CTD kinase (Lee, J.M. and Greenleaf, A.L., 1991, Gene Expression 2, 149-167), thereby increasing the number of genes on the 8.2 kb fragment to at least five. The transcripts of these genes represent approximately 83% of the DNA fragment, making it one of the most highly transcribed regions of the yeast chromosome analysed to date.