Nuclear genes encoding the yeast mitochondrial ATPase complex. Analysis of ATP1 coding the F1-ATPase alpha-subunit and its assembly.

Mitochondria prepared from the yeast nuclear pet mutant N9-84 lack a detectable F1-ATPase activity. Genetic complementation of this mutant with a pool of yeast genomic DNA in the yeast Escherichia coli shuttle vector YEp13 restored its growth on a nonfermentable carbon source. Mitochondria prepared from the transformed host contained an 8-fold higher than normal level of the F1 alpha-subunit and restored ATPase activity to 50% that of the wild-type strain. Deletion and nucleotide sequence analysis of the complementing DNA on the plasmid revealed a coding sequence designated ATP1 for a protein of 544 amino acids which exhibits 60 and 54% direct protein sequence homology with the proton-translocating ATPase alpha-subunits from tobacco chloroplast and E. coli, respectively. In vitro expression and mitochondrial import experiments using this ATP1 sequence showed that additional amino-terminal sequences not present in the comparable plant and bacterial subunits function as transient sequences for import.