Identification of a Mammalian Gene Structurally and Functionally Related to the CDC25 Gene of Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae CDC25 gene encodes a nucleotide-exchange-factor (NEF) that can convert the inactive GDP-bound state of RAS proteins to an active RAS·GTP complex. CDC25 can activate the yeast RAS proteins as well as the human H-ras protein. CDC25 is a member of a family of yeast genes that likely encode NEFs capable of regulating the RAS-related proteins found in yeast. By aligning the amino acid sequence of CDC25-related gene products we found a number of conserved motifs. Using degenerate oligonucleotides that encode these conserved sequences, we have used polymerase chain reactions to amplify fragments of mouse and human cDNAs related to the yeast CDC25 gene. We show that a chimeric molecule, part mouse and part yeast CDC25, can suppress the loss of CDC25 function in the yeast S. cerevisiae.