ISOLATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THE LEU2 GENE OF HANSENULA-POLYMORPHA

A DNA fragment carrying the LEU2 gene of methylotrophic yeast Hansenul a polymorpha was isolated by complementation of the leuB mutation of E scherichia coli. The nucleotide sequence of the isolated DNA fragment contains an open reading frame of 363 codons, coding for a protein 80% identical to the LEU2 gene product of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Furth er downstream, there is a partial reading frame with no obvious simila rity to known proteins. The LEU2 gene of H. polymorpha cannot compleme nt the leu2 mutation of S. cerevisiae. The sequence has been entered i n the EMBL data library under the Accession Number U00889.