Cloning of a yeast gene coding for the glutamate synthase small subunit (GUS2) by complementation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Escherichia coli glutamate auxotrophs

A Saccharomyces cerevisiae glutamate auxotroph, lacking NADP-glutamate dehydrogenase (NADP-GDH) and glutamate synthase (GOGAT) activities, was complemented with a yeast genomic library. Clones were obtained which still lacked NADP-GDH but showed GOGAT activity. Northern analysis revealed that the DNA fragment present in the complementing plasmids coded for a 1.5kb mRNA. Since the only GOGAT enzyme so far purified from S. cerevisiae is made up of a small and a large subunit, the size of the mRNA suggested that the cloned DNA fragment could code for the GOGAT small subunit. Plasmids were purified and used to transform Escherichia coli glutamate auxotrophs. Transformants were only recovered when the recipient strain was an E. coli GDH-less mutant lacking the small GOGAT subunit. These data show that we have cloned the structural gene coding for the yeast small subunit (GUS2). Evidence is also presented indicating that the GOGAT enzyme which is synthesized in the E. coli transformants is a hybrid comprising the large E. coli subunit and the small S. cerevisiae subunit.