Organization of the centromeric region of chromosome XIV in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

A 15.1 kb fragment of the yeast genome was allocated to the centromeric region of chromosome XIV by genetic mapping. It contained six bona fide genes, RPC34, FUN34, CIT1 (Suissa et al., 1984), RLP7, PET8 and MRP7 (Fearon and Mason, 1988) and two large open reading frames, DOM34 and TOM34. RPC34 and RLP7 define strictly essential functions, whereas CIT1, PET8 and MRP7 encode mitochondrial proteins. The PET8 product belongs to a family of mitochondrial carrier proteins. FUN34 encodes a putative transmembraneous protein that is non-essential as judged from the normal growth of the fun34-::LUK18(URA3) allele even on respirable substrates. TOM34 codes for a putative RNA binding protein, and DOM34 defines a hypothetical polypeptide of 35 kDa, with no significant homology to known proteins. The region under study also contains two divergently transcribed tDNAs, separated only by a chimeric transposable element. This tight tDNA linkage pattern is commonly encountered in yeast, and a general hypothesis is proposed for its emergence on the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome. RPC34, RLP7, PET8 and MRP7 are unique on the yeast genome, but the remaining genes belong to an extant centromeric duplication between chromosome III and XIV.