The protein sequence and some intron positions are conserved between the switching gene swi10 of Schizosaccharomyces pombe and the human excision repair gene ERCC1.

The switching gene swi10+ has a function in mating-type switching as well as in the repair of radiation damages. We have cloned the genomic swi10+ gene by functional complementation of the switching defect of the swi10-154 mutant. The swi10+ gene is not essential for viability. The DNA sequence revealed an open reading frame of 759 nucleotides interrupted by three introns of 127, 52 and 60 bp, respectively. The positions of intron I as well as of intron III of swi10 are evolutionary conserved in comparison to the introns III and IV of the human ERCC1 gene. The analysis of cDNA clones isolated by PCR amplification confirmed the structure of the swi10 gene. The putative Swi10 protein has homologies to the human and mouse ERCC1 protein, to Rad10 of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and to parts of UvrA and UvrC of E. coli. All these proteins are essential components for excision repair of damaged DNA. The Swi10 protein contains a putative DNA binding domain previously found in other proteins. Northern blot experiments and the analyses of cDNA clones indicate that intron I of the swi10 gene is not efficiently spliced.