STEROID/THYROID HORMONE RECEPTOR-RELATED GENE, WHICH IS INAPPROPRIATELY EXPRESSED IN HUMAN HEPTOCELLULAR CARCINOMA, AND WHICH IS A RETINOIC ACID RECEPTOR

摘要

ABSTRACTA previously isolated hepatitis .beta. virus (HBV) integration ina 147 bp cellular DNA fragment linked to hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC) was used as a probe to clone the corresponding complemen-tary DNA from a human liver cDNA library. Nucleotide sequenceanalysis revealed that the overall structure of the cellulargene, which has been named hap, is similar to that of the DNA-binding hormone receptors. Six out of seven hepatoma andhepatoma-derived cell-lines express a 2.5 kb hap mRNA specieswhich is undetectable in normal adult and fetal livers, but pres-ent in all non-hepatic tissues analyzed. Low stringency hy-bridization experiments revealed the existence of hap relatedgenes in the human genome. The cloned DNA sequence is useful inthe preparation of pure hap protein and as a probe in the detec-tion and isolation of complementary DNA and RNA sequences. Thehap protein is a retinoic acid (RA) receptor identified as RAR-.beta..