Genomic exploration of the hemiascomycetous yeasts: 10. Kluyveromyces thermotolerans.

A genomic exploration of Kluyveromyces thermotolerans was performed by random sequence tag (RST) analysis. We sequenced 2653 RSTs corresponding to inserts sequenced from both ends. We performed a systematic comparison with a complete set of proteins from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, other completely sequenced genomes and SwissProt. We identified six mitochondrial genes and 1358-1496 nuclear genes by comparison with S. cerevisiae. In addition, 25 genes were identified by comparison with other organisms. This corresponds to about 24% of the estimated gene content of this organism. A lower level of conservation is observed with orthologues to genes of S. cerevisiae previously classified as orphans. Gene order was found to be conserved between S. cerevisiae and K. thermotolerans in 56.5% of studied cases.