Isolation of a yeast protein kinase gene by screening with a mammalian protein kinase cDNA.

The gene for a new Saccharomyces cerevisiae protein kinase was identified and isolated by hybridization to a cloned cDNA for the catalytic subunit of bovine cAMP-dependent protein kinase. This newly isolated yeast gene encodes a 680-amino-acid protein that shows strong sequence similarity to several serine/threonine protein kinases. The protein kinase catalytic domain is located at the carboxy-terminal portion of the protein. A large, amino-terminal domain shows no sequence similarity to any known protein kinase. It seems likely that the amino-terminal domain mediates the effects of an unknown regulator of the newly identified yeast protein kinase.