Zinc finger transcriptional activators of yeasts

Transcriptional transactivators are important proteins which in addition to controlling the cell regulatory circuitries, can be manipulated for various biotechnological processes. The latter is of great interest for non-conventional yeasts used for industrial purposes. To facilitate the identification of these transactivators, we have reanalyzed the 'Genolevures' data (FEBS Lett. 487 (2000); http:// cbi.labri.u-bordeaux.fr/Genolevures/) for the presence of zinc finger (Zf) proteins. After analysis of 239 RST ('random sequence tag') sequences, we describe in this paper 161 homologs of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Zf proteins present in one or several of 13 different hemiascomyceteous yeasts. These partial sequences have been evaluated on different criteria such as percentage of identity of the proteins, synteny, detailed analysis of the Zf motif and flanking regions, and iterative BLASTs. They can be used to fetch the corresponding gene. (C) 2003 Federation of European Microbiological Societies. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.