CLONING AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THE C-ELEGANS HISTIDYL-TRANSFER RNA-SYNTHETASE GENE

In this paper, we report the cloning and sequencing of the C. elegans histidyl-tRNA synthetase gene. The complete genomic sequence, and most of the cDNA sequence, of this gene is now determined. The gene size i ncluding flanking and coding regions is 2230 nucleotides long. Three s mall introns (45 - 50 bp long) are found to interrupt the open reading frame. The open reading frame translates to 523 amino acids. This put ative protein sequence shows extensive homology with the human and yea st histidyl-tRNA the histidyl-tRNA synthetase gene is a single copy ge ne. Hence, it is very likely that it encodes both the cytoplasmic and the mitochondrial histidyl-tRNA synthetases. It is likely to be trans- spliced since it contains a trans-splice site in its 5' untranslated r egion.