Characterization of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae FMS1 gene related to Candida albicans corticosteroid-binding protein 1.

Laboratoire de Génétique Physiologique et Moléculaire, Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et d'Ingénierie Génétique, Poitiers, France.

In order to investigate ergosterol metabolism in S. cerevisiae we studied the CM8 mutant strain defective in the regulation of this pathway. A genomic multicopy library was screened to reverse the CM8 phenotype. This allowed us to characterize a new gene, FMS1, which relieves mutant phenotype by extragenic functional complementation. FMS1 may encode a 508 amino-acid protein. The predicted protein shares 35% identity with Cbp1p, a Candida albicans corticosteroid binding-protein. Fms1p also shows a weaker homology with monoamine oxidases. The construction of a FMS1 null-allele yeast strain demonstrated that this gene is not essential for yeast in normal usual laboratory culture conditions. The existence of a gene related to CBP1 of C. albicans in S. cerevisiae strongly suggests a possible function of steroid-binding proteins in yeast general physiology rather than in a process related to pathogenicity.

PMID: 8660467 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]