Identification of a novel casein kinase-1 homolog in fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe.

Fission yeast cells lacking either the ste9+- or rum1+ function cannot enter the cell differentiation pathway upon nutritional starvation. Sterility in both mutants is suppressed by the srs1-S41 mutation. A gene encoding a novel casein kinase-1 (CK1) isoform, cki3+, was isolated as a high-copy-number suppressor gene of the srs1 mutation. Cki3 protein is structurally more related to the Cki/Yck subfamily proteins than those of the Hhp/Hrr25 subfamily. A mutant cki3 gene in which a highly conserved lysine residue in the kinase subdomain II was substituted to arginine lost the ability to recover the growth defect in the srs1 mutant, indicating that catalytic activity was necessary for suppression. Gene disruption revealed that cki3+ was dispensable for cell viability, and cells lacking functional cki3+ exhibited no characteristic phenotype. Thus, S. pombe has three highly related CK1 isoforms (Cki1, Cki2 and Cki3), but none of them has an essential function.