The sequences of 6000 genes representing the complete genome of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (the budding yeast) will be available by early 1996. As a """"""""model"""""""" eukaryotic organism, this data will represent a resource of enormous value for interpreting human genes as has been dramatically demonstrated in the past year by the isolation of the ataxia-telangiectasia gene and the discovery that it is related to several yeast genes involved in cell cycle control and radiation sensitivity. We are continuing to work under a grant from the National Center for Human Genome Research to systematically search for new yeast-human homologue pairs in the expanding human EST data (see Z01-LM-00015-01-CBB) and to map approximately 1,000 of these to mouse and human chromosomes. We expect to find a number of yeast proteins that will become models for human disease genes by virtue of their map locations.
