Identification of YPD1, a gene of Candida albicans which encodes a two-component phosphohistidine intermediate protein

We have identified the YPD1 phosphohistidine intermediate two-component gen e of Candida albicans, YPD1 has an open reading frame of 552 bp, It is loca ted on chromosome 1 and an mRNA specific for YPD1 is detected under both ye ast and hyphal growth. YPD1 encodes a protein of 184 amino acids with an es timated molecular mass of 20.5 kDa. A search for similarities with other pr oteins in databases showed that CaYpd1p exhibits the greatest overall simil arity with Ypd1p from Saccharomyces cerevisiae (34.2% identity; 49.4% simil arity) as well as with the C-terminus half of a protein from Schizosaccharo myces pombe (Accession No. CAA22174), However, CaYpd1p also shows similarit y with other eukaryotic and prokaryotic proteins which function as phosphoh istidine intermediates in two-component phospho-relay systems. In these cas es, similarity was restricted to the amino acid sequences which surround th e conserved histidine residue that is phosphorylated, In addition, CaYPD1 ( but not CaYP1(H69Q)) complements the lack of YPD1 in S. cerevisiae, This ob servation supports the premise that CaYpd1p also may function as a phosphoh istidine intermediate protein in C. albicans. The Accession No. for the des cribed sequence is AF213247, as filed in the EMBL/GenBank/DDBJ database. Co pyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.