The HXT2 gene of Saccharomyces cerevisiae is required for high-affinity glucose transport

The HXT2 gene of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae was identified on the basis of its ability to complement the defect in glucose transport of a snf3 mutant when present on the multicopy plasmid pSC2. Analysis of the DNA sequence of HXT2 revealed an open reading frame of 541 codons, capable of encoding a protein of Mr 59,840. The predicted protein displayed high sequence and structural homology to a large family of procaryotic and eucaryotic sugar transporters. These proteins have 12 highly hydrophobic regions that could form transmembrane domains; the spacing of these putative transmembrane domains is also highly conserved. Several amino acid motifs characteristic of this sugar transporter family are also present in the HXT2 protein. An hxt2 null mutant strain lacked a significant component of high-affinity glucose transport when under derepressing (low-glucose) conditions. However, the hxt2 null mutation did not incur a major growth defect on glucose-containing media. Genetic and biochemical analyses suggest that wild-type levels of high-affinity glucose transport require the products of both the HXT2 and SNF3 genes; these genes are not linked. Low-stringency Southern blot analysis revealed a number of other sequences that cross-hybridize with HXT2, suggesting that S. cerevisiae possesses a large family of sugar transporter genes.