Growth of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae on glucose leads to repression of transcription of many genes required for alternative carbohydrate metabolism. The GRR1 gene appears to be of central importance to the glucose repression mechanism, because mutations in GRR1 result in a pleiotropic loss of glucose repression (R. Bailey and A. Woodword, Mol. Gen. Genet. 193:507-512, 1984). We have isolated the GRR1 gene and determined that null mutants are viable and display a number of growth defects in addition to the loss of glucose repression. Surprisingly, grr1 mutations convert SUC2, normally a glucose-repressed gene, into a glucose-induced gene. GRR1 encodes a protein of 1,151 amino acids that is expressed constitutively at low levels in yeast cells. GRR1 protein contains 12 tandem repeats of a sequence similar to leucine-rich motifs found in other proteins that may mediate protein-protein interactions. Indeed, cell fractionation studies are consistent with this view, suggesting that GRR1 protein is tightly associated with a particulate protein fraction in yeast extracts. The combined genetic and molecular data are consistent with the idea that GRR1 protein is a primary response element in the glucose repression pathway and is required for the generation or interpretation of the signal that induces glucose repression.