Structure and Expression of the Rat mRNA Encoding a Novel Member of the Fibroblast Growth Factor Family

doi:10.1074/jbc.271.27.15918

Structure and Expression of the Rat mRNA Encoding a Novel Member of the Fibroblast Growth Factor Family*

From the ^‡ Department of Genetic Biochemistry, Kyoto University Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kyoto 606–01, Japan

^§ To whom correspondence should be addressed:
Dept. of Genetic Biochemistry, Kyoto University Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Yoshida-Shimoadachi, Sakyo, Kyoto 606–01, Japan.
Fax: 81-75-753-4600.

Abstract

We isolated the cDNA encoding a novel member of the fibroblast growth factor (FGF) family from rat embryos by homology-based polymerase chain reaction. The FGF-related cDNA encodes a protein of 215 amino acids (∼24 kDa), which has a conserved ∼120-amino acid core with ∼30-60% amino acid sequence identity with the FGF family. This protein with a hydrophobic amino terminus appears to be a secreted protein. The cDNA was translated in a coupled in vitro transcription-translation system. The molecular mass of the translation product was observed to be ∼26 kDa. The expression of the FGF-related mRNA in the rat embryo and adult tissues was determined by Northern analysis and in situ hybridization. The mRNA was expressed in several discrete regions of the embryo. In adult tissues, the mRNA was preferentially expressed in the lung. The expression profile of the FGF-related mRNA was different from those of other FGF family mRNAs. As this protein is the 10th documented protein related to FGFs, we tentatively term this protein FGF-10.

Footnotes

↵* This work was supported in part by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, Japan. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. The article must therefore be 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™/EMBL Data Bank with accession number(s) D79215[GenBank].
↵¹ The abbreviations used are:

FGF

fibroblast growth factor

PCR

polymerase chain reaction

PBS

phosphate-buffered saline.
- Received December 20, 1995.
- Revision received April 9, 1996.