NUCLEOTIDE SEQUENCE OF THE COMPLEMENTARY DNA ENCODING EQUINE CLUSTERIN

摘要

Two complementary DNA (cDNA) clones encoding equine clusterin were isolated from a stallion testis cDNA library. Nucleotide sequence analysis of the longer, near-full length clone revealed a 1670 base pair (bp) fragment that contained 74 nucleotides of the 5' untranslated region (UTR), an open reading frame of 1350 bp that encodes a 21 amino acid (aa) leader polypeptide segment as well as a 429 aa mature equine clusterin protein, and a 3' UTR that is 225 bp long followed by a 21 bp polyadenylation signal. The equine clusterin nucleotide sequence is approximately 80% similar to other mammalian clusterins which have been cloned and sequenced. Northern blot analysis showed an approximate 1.8 kb equine testicular and epididymal mRNA transcript that hybridized to the equine cDNA probe. Differential expression of the equine clusterin transcript occurred between epididymal segments.