HAM1, the gene controlling 6-N-hydroxylaminopurine sensitivity and mutagenesis in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The ham1 mutant of yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is sensitive to the mutagenic and lethal effects of the base analog, 6-N-hydroxylaminopurine (HAP). We have isolated a clone from a centromere-plasmid-based genomic library complementing HAP sensitivity of the ham1 strain. After subcloning, a 3.4 kb functional fragment was sequenced. It contained three open reading frames (ORFs) corresponding to proteins 353, 197 and 184 amino acids long. LEU2⁺ disruptions of the promoter and N-terminal part of the gene coding 197 amino acids long protein led to moderate and strong sensitivity to HAP, respectively, and were allelic to the original ham1-1 mutation. Thus this ORF represents the HAM1 gene. The deduced amino acid sequence of HAM1 protein was not similar to any protein sequence of the SwissProt database. The HAM1 gene was localized on the right arm of chromosome X between cdc8 and cdc11. Spontaneous mutagenesis was not affected by the ham1::LEU2 disruption mutation.