ORGANIZATION AND STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN TISSUE TRANSGLUTAMINASE GENE

Analysis of the genomic organization of tissue transglutaminase shows that the gene is 32.5 kilobases, contains 13 exons and 12 introns. Our results show that the sites for the two alternative splicing forms of tissue transglutaminase we reported earlier are located within exons 6 and 10 respectively. The 5'-upstream region of the gene has several potential regulatory promoter elements, and the 3'-exon contains about 50% of the total cDNA size and codes for the C-terminus of the protei n. Alignment of deduced tissue transglutaminase amino acid sequence wi th other transglutaminases showed very similar intron splice positions . (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.