GENES REQUIRED FOR DEREPRESSION OF AN EXTRACELLULAR GLUCOAMYLASE GENE, STA2, IN THE YEAST SACCHAROMYCES

A diastatic strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae producing the STA2-encoded extracellular glucoamylase (GA) in a pronounced glucose-repressible fashion was used as a parent for generating mutants with reduced GA activity under normal conditions of derepression. In addition to mutations in STA2, five other recessive mutations were identified which fell into four complementation groups designated haf1 through haf4. RNA blot analysis suggested that the haf mutations confer defects in STA2 transcription. The haf mutants were pleiotropically defective in utilization of alternative carbon sources and resembled the snf (sucrose non-fermenting) mutants identified previously as unable to derepress the expression of the SUC2 gene encoding invertase. We present evidence strongly suggesting that haf1 = snf2, haf3 = snf1 and haf4 = snf5. By phenotypic criteria, the postulated HAF2 gene (which is none of the SNF genes tested) appears to be similar to SNF2, SNF5 and SNF6, and is possibly a non-redundant extension of this group of functionally related SNF genes.