The phosphotransferase activity of casein kinase II is required for its physiological function in vivo.

We have previously shown that the inviability associated with disruption of both catalytic subunits of casein kinase II in Saccharomyces cerevisiae can be rescued by plasmids expressing the catalytic subunit of the Drosophila enzyme (Padmanabha et al., 1990, Mol. Cell. Biol. 10, 4089). Here we describe the construction of mutant forms of the Drosophila catalytic subunit in which residues known to be crucial for catalytic activity in other protein kinases have been altered by site-directed mutagenesis. Mutation of either Lys66 or Asp173, which correspond to Lys72 and Asp184 of cAMP-dependent protein kinase, respectively, yields a casein kinase II catalytic subunit which fails to rescue a yeast strain lacking both endogenous catalytic subunit genes. The data indicate that the phosphotransferase activity of casein kinase II is required for its physiological function in vivo.