Worm Breeder's Gazette 14(2): 73 (February 1, 1996)

These abstracts should not be cited in bibliographies. Material contained herein should be treated as personal communication and should be cited as such only with the consent of the author.

Characterization of a C. elegans homologue of the S. cerevisiae gene STE20

Sharon Sokol, Jeff Way

Biology Dept., Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08855

     We have isolated by PCR a 400-bp fragment of the kinase domain of an
apparent C. elegans homologue of the yeast gene STE20, a kinase in the
mating pheromone response pathway acting immediately downstream of the
G-protein (upstream of the kinase cascade of STE7, STE11 and FUS3/KSS1).
This fragment displays an even higher degree of similarity with the
mammalian brain kinase p65PAK, which appears to be activated by Cdc42
(Manser et al., 1994). (See figure below.) We are trying to isolate an
animal deleted for this gene as well as a full-length cDNA clone.

     The region containing this gene, which maps to the X chromosome, has
recently been sequenced as part of the Genome Project. This gene spans an
apparent cosmid gap, but it actually is located over two cosmids that do
overlap by 4 kb. The presence of this "gap" plus the difficulty we have
had in producing a full-length cDNA clone and in growing the cosmids cause
us to think that this DNA sequence may be difficult to grow in E. coli. We
would thus be grateful for any assistance with obtaining E. coli strains
that will accept these difficult-to-grow sequences.
  
Reference: 
Manser, E., T. Leung, H. Salihuddin, Z.-s. Zhao and L. Lim.  "A brain
serine/threonine protein kinase activated by Cdc42 and Rac1."  Nature 367:
40-46 (1994).


(A figure accompanies the original article.)