GCN4 protein mediates the transcriptional activation of amino acid biosynthetic genes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by specifically binding to DNA sequences in their 5'-regulatory regions. GCN4 expression is regulated at the level of translation, with translational derepression occurring under conditions of amino acid starvation. The product of the GCN2 gene is essential for translational derepression of GCN4. Sequence analysis of the GCN2 gene reveals that the GCN2 protein has a domain highly homologous to the catalytic domain of all known protein kinases. Furthermore, gcn2 strains are deficient in a protein kinase activity corresponding to a protein with the calculated molecular weight deduced from the GCN2 open reading frame. Therefore it is likely that GCN2 encodes a protein kinase, which may be directly involved in translational regulation of the GCN4 mRNA. Transcription of the GCN2 gene is increased when cells are cultured in amino acid starvation medium. This transcriptional activation is mediated by the GCN4 protein, which binds to the promoter region of the GCN2 gene. Thus, this system is modulated by a transcriptional-translational regulatory circuit, which is activated by amino acid starvation. Activation is not the result of a simple quantitative increase of either one of the identified components of the circuit.