Serine and threonine catabolism in Saccharomyces cerevisiae: the CHA1 polypeptide is homologous with other serine and threonine dehydratases.

The catabolic L-serine (L-threonine) dehydratase of Saccharomyces cerevisiae allows the yeast to grow on media with L-serine or L-threonine as sole nitrogen source. Previously we have cloned the CHA1 gene by complementation of a mutant, cha1, lacking the dehydratase activity. Here we present the DNA sequence of a 1,766-bp fragment of the CHA1 region encompassing an open reading frame of 1080 bp. Comparison of the predicted amino acid sequence of the CHA1 polypeptide with that of other serine/threonine dehydratases revealed several blocks of sequence homology. Thus, the amino acid sequence of rat liver serine dehydratase (SDH2) and the CHA1 polypeptide are 44% homologous allowing for conservative substitutions, while 36% similarity is found between the catabolic threonine dehydratase (tdcB) of Escherichia coli and the CHA1 protein. This strongly suggests that CHA1 is the structural gene for the yeast catabolic serine (threonine) dehydratase. S1-nuclease mapping of the CHA1 mRNA ends showed a major transcription initiation site corresponding to an untranslated leader of about 19 nucleotides, while a major polyadenylation site was located about 86 nucleotides downstream from the open reading frame. Furthermore, we have mapped the chromosomal position of the CHA1 gene to less than 0.5 kb centromere proximal to HML on the left arm of chromosome III.