Expression of a Drosophila heat-shock gene in cells of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

A 3.52-kilobase (kb) segment of Drosophila melanogaster DNA carrying the 2.15-kb transcribed sequence for the 70 000-dalton heat-shock protein (hsp70) and 1.14-kb of the 5' flanking sequence was inserted into an autonomously replicating chimeric plasmid and used to transform the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The Drosophila gene is efficiently transcribed in the transformed cells, yielding a transcript which is 21 nucleotides shorter than the normal Drosophila mRNA at the 5' end. Significant increases in the amount of Drosophila-specific RNA occur when the transformed cells are subjected to heat shock, indicating that the Drosophila gene is inducible in the yeast cells.