The structure and regulation of phosphoglucose isomerase in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

We have cloned and sequenced the PGI1 gene, encoding phosphoglucose isomerase (E.C.5.3.1.9), from Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The nucleotide sequence predicts subunits of 554 amino acids with a molecular weight of 61,230. Both the size and amino acid composition correlate well with measurements from purified protein. We have compared the PGI1 protein with the predicted sequence for pig muscle PGI. In spite of some evolutionary divergence the proteins are very similar and there are some highly conserved regions, two of which have been implicated in the active site. It has been suggested that PGI exists in two or more isozyme forms in S. cerevisiae and analogy with ADR2/ADC1 suggests that such PGI isozymes might also be differentially regulated during glycolytic/gluconeogenic growth. We have used accurate quantitation of PGI1 mRNA and gene fusions of PGI1 to the lacZ gene of Escherichia coli to show that PGI1 transcription is regulated neither between glycolytic and gluconeogenic growth nor between exponential and stationary phase. The complete lack of PGI activity in PGI1 deletion mutants and of differential regulation suggests that the isozymes of PGI might result merely from processing of the PGI1 gene product.