Alternative Splicing of STY, a Nuclear Dual Specificity Kinase

doi:10.1074/jbc.270.37.21524

Alternative Splicing of STY, a Nuclear Dual Specificity Kinase (*)

From the Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre, Cancer Research Group, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1H 8L6

^§§ Senior Scientist of the National Cancer Institute. To whom correspondence and reprint requests should be addressed:
Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre, Cancer Research Group, Third Floor, 501 Smyth Rd., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1H 8L6.
Tel.: 613-247-6893; Fax 613-247-6897.

↵** Present address: Imperial Cancer Research Fund, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, United Kingdom WC2A 3PX.

Abstract

The LAMMER subfamily of kinases has been conserved throughout evolution, and its members are thought to play important roles in the regulation of cellular growth and differentiation programs. STY is a murine LAMMER kinase which has been implicated in the control of PC12 cell differentiation. Multiple transcripts are derived from the Sty gene, and their relative abundance is developmentally regulated. Alternative splicing of the primary Sty transcript generates mRNAs encoding full-length catalytically active (STY) and truncated, kinase-deficient polypeptides. Both STY and its truncated isoform, STY, are localized in the nucleus and are capable of heterodimerizing. We also demonstrate that STY functions as a dual specificity kinase in mammalian cells.

Footnotes

↵^§ Supported by a Medical Research Council studentship.
↵^¶ Supported by a Medical Research Council postdoctoral fellowship. Present address: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA 98104.
↵* This work was supported in part by the Medical Research Council of Canada (MRC). The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore by hereby marked “advertisement” in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

The nucleotide sequence(s) reported in this paper has been submitted to the GenBank(TM)/EMBL Data Bank with accession number(s) U11054 [GenBank](Sty5.6) and U21209 [GenBank](Sty).
↵¹ The abbreviations used are:

kb

kilobase(s)

bp

base pair(s)

mAb

monoclonal antibody

Tyr(P)

phosphotyrosine

E

exon

I

intron

GST

glutathione S-transferase

PAGE

polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis

RT-PCR

reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction

MOPS

4-morpholinepropanesulfonic acid.
↵²N. Abraham and J. C. Bell, unpublished observations.
³K. Colwill, T. Pawson, J. C. Bell, and P. I. Duncan, unpublished observations.
- Received February 22, 1995.
- Revision received June 20, 1995.