E. Jankevics et al., STRUCTURE AND ANALYSIS OF THE 5' FLANKING REGION OF THE HUMAN INTERLEUKIN-2 GENE, Biochimica et biophysica acta, N. Gene structure and expression, 1217(2), 1994, pp. 235-238
To investigate the structural and functional organization of the human
interleukin-2 locus, the nucleotide sequence of 9339 bp of the 5' fla
nking region of this gene has been determined. Computer search analysi
s reveals five stretches with a high degree of homology between the hu
man and mouse 5' flanking sequence, including a very distant 5' region
. In this region additional binding sites for potential transcription
factors were found that are identical to known regulatory sequences. T
he possible roles of these putative regulatory elements in the interle
ukin-2 gene regulation remain to be proven. The 5' end of the sequence
contains almost full-length LINE element. LINE consensus open reading
frames ORF1 and ORF2 in the reported sequence are interrupted by inse
rtions, deletions or in-frame nonsense mutations. Comparative analysis
of the ratio of codon changes that result in amino acid replacement t
o those that are silent revealed a high silent mutation frequency thro
ughout the consensus ORF1 3' end, suggesting that this region is proba
bly under selection for protein function.