Among eukaryotes studied to date, homologs of the yeast 76-amino acid ribosomal protein have invariably been found to be cotranslated with ubiquitin. However, in the nematodes Caenorhabditis elegans and Caenorhabditis briggsae, a 70-amino acid domain with only 40% identity to ubiquitin is cotranslated with a homolog of the ribosomal protein. In the nematode ubiquitin-like (UbL) proteins, the nucleotide sequence of the UbL coding region is 92% identical in C. elegans and C. briggsae. The corresponding gene sequence contains a single intron at a location identical to that found in the polyubiquitin gene of C. elegans, further confirming that the ubl genes are evolutionarily related to ubiquitin. The ribosomal protein portion of the UbL polypeptide consists of 93 amino acids and is 68% identical to the human homolog. The ribosomal protein portion of UbL is longer than in other homologs, with the additional sequence being present as a basic carboxyl extension. The ubl gene is constitutively expressed in all life cycle stages of C. elegans. A comparison of the nematode UbL sequences with other ubiquitin-like genes reveals a pattern of sequence conservation, which suggests that the ubiquitin-like proteins may have conserved functional domains.