Upstream regulatory regions controlling the expression of the yeast maltase gene

Abstract

The expression of the maltase (MALS) and the maltose permease (MALT) genes in Saccharomyces species is coregulated at the transcriptional level; they are coordinately induced by maltose in the presence of a positively acting regulatory (MALR) gene and carbon catabolite repressed by glucose. We generated a series of deletions in the upstream region of the MAL6S gene to examine the regulatory elements in detail. The results showed that inducible expression by maltose was lost when the region between 320 and 380 base pairs upstream of the translation initiation codon was deleted. This region contained an imperfect inverted repeat sequence (-361 to -327) or four copies of short direct repeats that might serve as components of the upstream activation site (UASM) for the maltase gene, or both. When a stretch of T-rich sequence (-253 to -237) was deleted, the susceptibility of the maltase gene to carbon catabolite repression was affected.