Identification of a CAP (adenylyl-cyclase-associated protein) homologous gene in Lentinus edodes and its functional complementation of yeast CAP mutants.

Abstract

The adenylyl-cyclase-associated protein, CAP, was originally identified in yeasts as a protein that functions in both signal transduction and cytoskeletal organization. This paper reports the identification of a cDNA and genomic DNA that encodes a CAP homologue from the mushroom Lentinus edodes. The L. edodes cap gene contains eight introns and an ORF encoding a 518 amino acid protein. The L. edodes CAP is 35.5% and 40.9% identical at the amino acid level with Saccharomyces cerevisiae CAP and Schizosaccharomyces pombe CAP, respectively. The C-terminal domain shows greater homology (39-46% identity) with yeast CAPs than does the N-terminal domain (27-35% identity). Southern blotting and Northern blotting results suggest that L. edodes cap is a single-copy gene and uniformly expressed. Expression of the L. edodes CAP in both Schiz. pombe and Sacch. cerevisiae complemented defects associated with the loss of the C-terminal domain function of the endogenous CAP. By using a yeast two-hybrid assay, an interaction was demonstrated between the L. edodes CAP and Schiz. pombe actin. This result and the functional complementation test indicate that CAP from L. edodes has a conserved C-terminal domain function.