A Possible Yeast Homolog of Human Active-Gene-Repairing Helicase ERCC6

We report here the sequencing and identification on the chromosome X of S. cerevisiae of an open reading frame, designated GTA1085, encoding a protein 1085 amino acids in size that displays significant homology to a of helicase subfamily. The highest similarity score is with ERCC6, a human putative helicase involved in the repair of active genes, with 53.3 % identity over a stretch of 589 amino acids. This putative protein contains all seven consecutive domains conserved among DNA and RNA helicases. Thus, it apparently constitutes a novel member of this subfamily and might be involved, like ERCC6, in the preferential repair of active genes in yeast.