Characterization of 16 novel human genes showing high similarity to yeast sequences

The entire set of open reading frames (ORFs) of Saccharomyces cerevisiae ha s been used to perform systematic similarity searches against nucleic acid and protein databases: with the aim of identifying interesting homologies b etween yeast and mammalian genes. Many similarities were detected: mostly w ith known genes. However: several yeast ORFs were only found to match human partial sequence tags: indicating the presence of human transcripts still uncharacterized that have a homologous counterpart in yeast, About 30 such transcripts were further studied and named HUSSY (human Sequence Similar to yeast). The 16 most interesting are presented in this paper along with the ir sequencing and mapping data, As expected: most of these genes seem to be invoiced in basic metabolic and cellular functions (lipoic acid biosynthes is: ribulose-5-phosphate-3-epimerase: glycosyl transferase: beta -transduci n: serine-threonine-kinase: ABC proteins: cation transporters). Genes relat ed to RNA maturation mere also found (homologues to DIM1: ROK1-RNA-elicase and NFS1). Furthermore: five novel human genes were detected (HUSSY-03: HUS SY-22: HUSSY-23: HUSSY-27: HUSSY-29) that appear to be homologous to yeast genes whose function is still undetermined. More information on this work c an be obtained at the website http://grup.bio.unipd.it/hussy.I Copyright (C ) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.