A COMPARATIVE-ANALYSIS OF DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF YEAST PROTEIN SEQUENCES

The recently published sequence of yeast chromosome III (YCIII) provid es the longest continuous stretch of a eukaryotic DNA molecule sequenc ed to date (315 kb). The sequence contains 116 distinct AUG-initiated open reading frames of at least 200 codons in length, more than 50 of which had not been described previously nor bear significant similarit y to known proteins. We have analysed the YCIII known and putative pro tein sequences with respect to significant statistical features which might reflect on structural and functional characteristics. The YCIII proteins have striking similarities and differences in their sequence attribute distributions compared to the corresponding distributions fo r all available yeast sequences and other protein collections. Nine ex amples of YCIII proteins with distinctive sequence features are discus sed in detail.