CAN1, A GENE ENCODING A PERMEASE FOR BASIC-AMINO-ACIDS IN CANDIDA-ALBICANS

The first gene coding for an amino-acid permease of Candida albicans w as sequenced. The DNA fragment complementing the lysine-permease defic iency was 3385 bp long. An open reading frame of 1713 nucleotides was found encoding a protein of 571 amino acids, with a calculated molecul ar weight of 63343. Analysis of the deduced primary structure revealed ten membrane spanning regions and three potential N-glycosylation sit es. The protein sequence is strongly homologous to both permeases for basic amino acids (Can1 and Lyp1) of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. C-termi nal part of another ORF (105 aa), highly homologous to the gene HAL2 o f S. cerevisiae, was found 133 bp downstream, and in tail-to-tail orie ntation to the permease gene. The sequence data will appear in the EMB L/GenBank/DDBJ Nucleotide Sequence Data Libraries under the accession number X76689.