Aspergillus niger mutants relieved of carbon repression were isolated from an areA parental strain by selection of colonies that exhibited improved growth on a combination of 4-aminobutanoic acid (GABA) and D-glucose. In addition to derepression of the utilization of GABA as a nitrogen source in the presence of D-glucose, three of the four mutants also showed derepression of Lalanine and L-proline utilization. Transformation of the mutants with the A. niger creA gene, encoding the repressor protein CREA, re-established the areA phenotype on GABND-glucose, identifying the mutations as creAd. The creA gene mapped on chromosome IV by linkage analysis and contour-clamped homogeneous electric field hybridization. The creA mutants obtained were used to study the involvement of CREA in repression by D-glucose of arabinases and L-arabinose catabolism in A. niger. In wild-type A. niger, a-L-arabinofuranosidase A, a+ arabinof uranosidase B, endo-arabinase, L-arabinose reductase and L-arabitol dehydrogenase were induced on L-arabinose, but addition of D-glucose prevented this induction. Repression was relieved to varying degrees in the creA mutants, showing that biosynthesis of arabinaoes and L-arabinose catabolic enzymes is under control of CREA.1

The yeast Candida cloacae is capable of growing on alkanes and fatty acids as sole carbon sources. Transfer of cultures from a glucose medium to one containing oleic acid induced seven proteins of M r 102,000, 73,000, 61,000, 54,000, and 46,000 and two in the region of M r 45,000 and repressed a protein of M r 64,000. The induction of the M r 73,000 protein reached a 7-fold maximum 24 h after induction. The protein was confirmed by its enzyme activity to be a long-chain fatty-acid alcohol oxidase (LC-FAO) and purified to homogeneity from microsomes by a rapid procedure involving hydrophobic chromatography. An internal peptide of 30 amino acids was sequenced. A 1100-base pair cDNA fragment containing the LC-FAO peptide coding sequence was used to isolate a single exon genomic clone containing the full-length coding sequence of an LC-FAO (fao1). The fao1 gene product was expressed in Escherichia coli and was translated as a functional long-chain alcohol oxidase, which was present in the membrane fraction. In addition, full-length coding sequences for a Candida tropicalis LC-FAO (faoT) and a second C. cloacae LC-FAO (fao2) were isolated. The DNA sequences obtained had open reading frames of 2094 (fao1), 2091 (fao2), and 2112 (faoT) base pairs. The derived amino acid sequences of fao2 and faoT showed 89.4 and 76.2% similarities to fao1. The fao1 gene is much more highly induced on alkane than is fao2. Although this study describes the first known DNA sequences encoding LC-FAOs from any source, there are unassigned Arabidopsis sequences and an unassigned Mycobacterium sequence in the GenBank TM Data Bank that show strong homology to the described LC-FAO sequences. The conservation of sequence between yeast, plants, and bacteria suggests that an as yet undescribed family of long-chain fattyacid oxidases exists in both eukaryotes and prokaryotes.

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The 3-phosphoglycerate kinase gene (pgk) from Trichoderma reesei was isolated by hybridization with the corresponding Saccharomyces cerevisiae PGK gene. The 1,545 nt long nucleotide sequence of the cloned gene codes for a 416 amino acid protein. The coding sequence contains two introns of 219 and 75 nt, respectively, at positions identical to those corresponding genes from the other filamentous fungi Aspergillus nidulans and Penicillum chrysogenum. This gene codes for two mRNAs of about 1.65 kb and 1.85 kb. The PGK protein of Trichoderma shows extensive homology to the PGKs of other fungi A. nidulans (77%), P. chrysogenum (73%) and Saccharomyces cerevisiae (69%). However, the PGKs of the two other filamentous fungi, A. nidulans and P. chrysogenum, seem to be more closely related to each other than to the T. reesei enzyme.