COMPARATIVE-ANALYSIS OF THE REGION OF THE MITOCHONDRIAL GENOME CONTAINING THE ATPASE SUBUNIT 9 GENE IN THE 2 RELATED YEAST SPECIES SACCHAROMYCES-DOUGLASII AND SACCHAROMYCES-CEREVISIAE

We have determined the nucleotide sequence of a region of the mitochon drial genome of the yeast Saccharomyces douglasii which contains the A TPase subunit 9 gene and part of the intergenic sequences that surroun d it. The gene is 228 nucleotides long and encodes a polypeptide of 76 aa. A comparison of the coding sequence with that of S. cerevisiae re veals the presence of three silent transitions. A high level of simila rity is also found between regions involved in the initiation of trans cription and mRNA processing. More interestingly, a region of similari ty situated outside the known regulatory regions has been identified. As the intergenic regions are generally highly divergent, the remarkab le conservation of these non-coding sequences suggests that their stru cture may be relevant to the expression of this region of the mitochon drial DNA.