Characterization of 16 novel human genes showing high similarity to yeast sequences.

The entire set of open reading frames (ORFs) of Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been used to perform systematic similarity searches against nucleic acid and protein databases: with the aim of identifying interesting homologies between yeast and mammalian genes. Many similarities were detected: mostly with known genes. However: several yeast ORFs were only found to match human partial sequence tags: indicating the presence of human transcripts still uncharacterized that have a homologous counterpart in yeast. About 30 such transcripts were further studied and named HUSSY (human sequence similar to yeast). The 16 most interesting are presented in this paper along with their sequencing and mapping data. As expected: most of these genes seem to be involved in basic metabolic and cellular functions (lipoic acid biosynthesis: ribulose-5-phosphate-3-epimerase: glycosyl transferase: beta-transducin: serine-threonine-kinase: ABC proteins: cation transporters). Genes related to RNA maturation were also found (homologues to DIM1: ROK1-RNA-elicase and NFS1). Furthermore: five novel human genes were detected (HUSSY-03: HUSSY-22: HUSSY-23: HUSSY-27: HUSSY-29) that appear to be homologous to yeast genes whose function is still undetermined. More information on this work can be obtained at the website http://grup.bio.unipd.it/hussy Copyright 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.