A new member of the adenylate kinase family in yeast: PAK3 is highly homologous to mammalian AK3 and is targeted to mitochondria.

Making use of the polymerase chain reaction primed by oligonucleotides corresponding to regions conserved between members of the nucleoside monophosphate kinase family, we have isolated the yeast gene PAK3. Pak3p belongs to the subgroup of long-form adenylate kinase isozymes (deduced molecular mass 25.3 kDa) and exhibits highest sequence similarity to bovine AK3 rather than to the yeast isozyme, Aky2p. The gene is shown to be non-essential because haploid disruption mutants are viable, both in the presence and absence of a functional AKY2 allele. It maps on chromosome V upstream of RAD3. Its expression level is low when cells are grown on glucose or other fermentable carbon sources and about threefold higher on glycerol, but can be significantly induced by ethanol. A PAK3/mouse dihydrofolate reductase fusion construct expressed in yeast is targeted to mitochondria. Transformation with PAK3 on a multicopy plasmid complements neither adenylate kinase deficiency in an aky2-disrupted yeast strain nor in Escherichia coli cells conditionally defective in adenylate kinase.