SCD5, a suppressor of clathrin deficiency, encodes a novel protein with a late secretory function in yeast.

Clathrin and its associated proteins constitute a major class of coat proteins involved in vesicle budding during membrane transport. An interesting characteristic of the yeast clathrin heavy chain gene (CHC1) is that in some strains a CHC1 deletion is lethal, while in others it is not. Recently, our laboratory developed a screen that identified five multicopy suppressors that can rescue lethal strains of clathrin heavy chain-deficient yeast (Chc - scd1-i) to viability. One of these suppressors, SCD5, encodes a novel protein of 872 amino acids containing two regions of repeated motifs of unknown function. Deletion of SCD5 has shown that it is essential for cell growth at 30 degrees C. scd5-delta strains carrying low copy plasmids encoding C-terminal truncations of Scd5p are temperature sensitive for growth at 37 degrees C. At the nonpermissive temperature, cells expressing a 338-amino acid deletion (Scd5P-delta 338) accumulate an internal pool of fully glycosylated invertase and mature alpha-factor, while processing and sorting of the vacuolar hydrolase carboxypeptidase Y is normal. The truncation mutant also accumulates 80- to 100-nm vesicles similar to many late sec mutants. Moreover, at 34 degrees C, overexpression of Scd5p suppresses the temperature sensitivity of a sec2 mutant, which is blocked at a post-Golgi step of the secretory pathway. Biochemical analyses indicate that approximately 50% of Scd5p sediments with a 100,000 x g membrane fraction and is associated as a peripheral membrane protein. Overall, these results indicate that Scd5p is involved in vesicular transport at a late stage of the secretory pathway. Furthermore, this suggests that the lethality of clathrin-deficient yeast can be rescued by modulation of vesicular transport at this late secretory step.