AbstractTyrosine phosphorylation is widely recognized as playing important roles in cell differentiation, proliferation, and carcinogenesis. We have used the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method to identify protein tyrosine kinases that are expressed in the skin. Mixed oligonucleotide probes were used to amplify and screen a neonatal murine skin cDNA pool for clones encoding amino acid contiguities whose conservation is characteristic of the protein tyrosine kinase family. When the PCR products were sequenced, 13 distinct clones were found, of which one is novel to date and has provisionally been namedtks(for tyrosine kinase identified from skin). Sequence homology comparison showed that thetksgene is homologous to the src and fes/fps families. Northern blotting using PCR products oftksas a probe revealed that the mRNA oftksis detected ubiquitously and weakly in other tissues such as brain, lung, liver, thymus and kidney. This fact suggests that thetksgene is expressed in widely distributed cell types.
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