Fatty acylation is important but not essential for Saccharomyces cerevisiae RAS function.

Two proteins in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae that are encoded by the genes RAS1 and RAS2 are structurally and functionally homologous to proteins of the mammalian ras oncogene family. We examined the role of fatty acylation in the maturation of yeast RAS2 protein by creating mutants in the putative palmitate addition site located at the carboxyl terminus of the protein. Two mutations, Cys-318 to an opal termination codon and Cys-319 to Ser-319, were created in vitro and substituted in the chromosome in place of the normal RAS2 allele. These changes resulted in a failure of RAS2 protein to be acylated with palmitate and a failure of RAS2 protein to be localized to a membrane fraction. The mutations yielded a Ras2- phenotype with respect to the ability of the resultant mutants to grow on nonfermentable carbon sources and to complement ras1- mutants. However, overexpression of the ras2Ser-319 product yielded a Ras+ phenotype without a corresponding association of the mutant protein with the membrane fraction. We conclude that the presence of a fatty acyl moiety is important for localizing RAS2 protein to the membrane where it is active but that the fatty acyl group is not an absolute requirement of RAS2 protein function.