Isolation and Characterization of Two Genes Encoding Yeast Mating Pheromone Signaling Elements: CDC72 and CDC73

Excerpt

The mating response in Saccharomyces cerevisiae is mediated by the action of peptide mating pheromones (for review, see Thorner 1981). Cells of each mating type secrete small peptides that prepare cells of the opposite mating type for conjugation. The response is highly pleiotropic, involving alterations in many aspects of cellular physiology. Some of the better characterized components of the pheromone response include the arrest of responsive cells in the G₁ interval of the cell cycle (Bücking-Throm et al. 1973), the deposition of mating-specific cell-surface agglutinins (Feherenbacher et al. 1978; Tkacz and MacKay 1979; Terrance and Lipke 1981), and the induction of specific transcripts (Stetler and Thorner 1984). Despite the suitability of yeast for genetic approaches, little was known about the mechanism by which the pheromone response signal is transduced until recently. On the basis of sequence analysis of the cloned receptor genes, it was predicted that the receptor proteins are...