M. Rehli et al., MOLECULAR-CLONING OF A NOVEL MACROPHAGE MATURATION-ASSOCIATED TRANSCRIPT ENCODING A PROTEIN WITH SEVERAL POTENTIAL TRANSMEMBRANE DOMAINS, Biochemical and biophysical research communications, 217(2), 1995, pp. 661-667
Differentiation of tissue macrophages from bone marrow progenitor cell
s via circulating blood monocytes is a complex and multistep process.
In order to analyze macrophage maturation on the molecular level we us
ed the method of mRNA differential display to identify novel genes tha
t are preferentially expressed in mature, in vitro differentiated macr
ophages. A PCR-fragment could be isolated that was amplified from macr
ophages, but not from freshly isolated monocytes, and macrophage-speci
fic expression was confirmed by Northern blot analysis. Several corres
ponding cDNA clones could be isolated from a macrophage cDNA library,
covering a nucleotide sequence of 2.5 kb. Nucleotide sequence of this
cDNA showed no homology to known genes. The sequence reveals an open r
eading frame that codes for a 238 amino acid hydrophobic protein with
seven potential transmembrane domains, suggesting a possible role as a
receptor or an ion channel. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.