The Saccharomyces cerevisiae CWH8 gene is required for full levels of dolichol-linked oligosaccharides in the endoplasmic reticulum and for efficient N-glycosylation.

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae mutant cwh8 was previously found to have an anomalous cell wall. Here we show that the cwh8 mutant has an N -glycosylation defect. We found that cwh8 cells were resistant to vanadate and sensitive to hygromycin B, and produced glycoforms of invertase and carboxypeptidase Y with a reduced number of N -chains. We have cloned the CWH8 gene. We found that it was nonessential and encoded a putative transmembrane protein of 239 amino acids. Comparison of the in vitro oligosaccharyl transferase activities of membrane preparations from wild type or cwh8 Delta cells revealed no differences in enzyme kinetic properties indicating that the oligosaccharyl transferase complex of mutant cells was not affected. cwh8 Delta cells also produced normal dolichols and dolichol-linked oligosaccharide intermediates including the full-length form Glc3Man9GlcNAc2. The level of dolichol-linked oligosaccharides in cwh8 Delta cells was, however, reduced to about 20% of the wild type. We propose that inefficient N -glycosylation of secretory proteins in cwh8 Delta cells is caused by an insufficient supply of dolichol-linked oligosaccharide substrate.