AAR2, a gene for splicing pre-mRNA of the MATa1 cistron in cell type control of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

We have isolated a class of mutants, aar2, showing the alpha mating type due to a defect in a1-alpha 2 repression but with alpha 2 repression activity from a nonmater strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae expressing both a and alpha mating-type information in duplicate. Cells of the aar2 mutant and the aar2 disruptant also show a growth defect. A DNA fragment complementing the aar2 mutation contains an open reading frame consisting of 355 amino acid codons. Northern hybridization showed that cells of the aar2 mutant and disruptant contained alpha 1 and alpha 2 transcripts of the MAT alpha gene (or HML alpha in sir3 cells), but their a1 transcript of MATa (or HMRa in sir3 cells) migrated more slowly than that of the wild-type cells on gel electrophoresis and gave a diffused band. Primer extension analysis showed that the aar2 mutant and disruptant have a defect in splicing two short introns of the a1 pre-mRNA but not in splicing pre-mRNA of ACT1. The alpha mating type, but not the slow-growing phenotype, of the aar2 mutant was suppressed by introduction of an intronless MATa1 DNA. Thus, the AAR2 gene is involved in splicing pre-mRNA of the a1 cistron and other genes that are important for cell growth. The AAR2 locus was mapped on chromosome II beside the SSA3 locus, with a 276-bp space, but was not allelic to either PRP5 or PRP6, which are both located on chromosome II and function in splicing pre-mRNA of ACT1.