ATP synthase from bovine mitochondria: complementary DNA sequence of the import precursor of a heart isoform of the alpha subunit.

The alpha-subunit of ATP synthase from mitochondria is a major component of the extrinsic membrane sector of the enzyme. It is encoded in nuclear DNA. A family of overlapping complementary DNA clones encoding its precursor has been isolated from a bovine library by using in the first instance a mixture of 128 synthetic oligonucleotides designed on the basis of the known protein sequence, and the sequence of the full-length cDNA has been determined. The deduced protein sequence shows that the alpha-subunit of ATP synthase has a presequence of 43 amino acids that is not present in the mature protein. Presumably it directs the protein into the mitochondrial matrix and is removed during the import process. The encoded protein sequence is also longer by one amino acid at its C-terminal end than the protein isolated from F1-ATPase, but this alanine residue may have been removed artifactually during release of the F1-ATPase particle from the inner mitochondrial membrane. With the exception of one uncertainty caused by an ambiguity at one position in the nucleotide sequence, the mature protein sequence encoded in the cDNA is exactly the same as the sequence determined previously by direct analysis of the protein isolated from bovine heart mitochondria [Walker et al. (1985) J. Mol. Biol. 184, 677-701]. The cDNA sequence differs in 158 nucleotides over a region of alignment of 1097 nucleotides from a partial cDNA for the alpha-subunit that has been isolated from a bovine cDNA derived from liver RNA [Breen (1988) Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 152, 264-269].(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)