Lack of carbon catabolite inactivation in a mutant of Saccharomyces cerevisiae with reduced hexokinase activity

Abstract

A mutant of Saccharomyces cerevisiae with reduced hexokinase activity and deficient in carbon catabolite inactivation is described. The reason for this lack of inactivation is not a lowered concentration of glycolysis metabolites or other low molecular effectors such as glucose, and ATP. The results point to the hexose phosphorylation step as initiator for carbon catabolite inactivation. It appears that one of the hexokinase isoenzymes, altered in the mutant, initiates the inactivation by conformational change. Repression of enzymes that are subject to carbon catabolite inactivation, is normal in the mutant. This indicates that inactivation and repression of those enzymes proceed in different ways, even though they may share common intermediate reactions.