THE MOUSE AND HUMAN HOMOLOGS OF DMC1, THE YEAST MEIOSIS-SPECIFIC HOMOLOGOUS RECOMBINATION GENE, HAVE A COMMON UNIQUE FORM OF EXON-SKIPPED TRANSCRIPT IN MEIOSIS
T. Habu et al., THE MOUSE AND HUMAN HOMOLOGS OF DMC1, THE YEAST MEIOSIS-SPECIFIC HOMOLOGOUS RECOMBINATION GENE, HAVE A COMMON UNIQUE FORM OF EXON-SKIPPED TRANSCRIPT IN MEIOSIS, Nucleic acids research, 24(3), 1996, pp. 470-477
Genetic recombination in meiosis plays an important role in generating
diversity of genetic information. In yeast an Escherichia coli RecA-l
ike gene, DMC1, is expressed in meiotic prophase and its product co-lo
calizes with Rad51 protein on zygotene chromosomes, We have cloned the
mouse and human homologs of the yeast DMC1 gene, The predicted human
and mouse DMC1 proteins showed 54.1% sequence identity with yeast Dmc1
protein, The domain II region, highly conserved in the E.coli RecA-li
ke protein family, was also found in the mammalian DMC1 proteins, incl
uding the two ATP binding motifs and DNA binding sites within the regi
on, In situ hybridization analysis revealed expression of the mouse Dm
c1 gene in testicular germ cells in meiosis; RT-PCR showed expression
in embryonal ovaries, These findings suggest that DMC1 plays an import
ant role in meiotic homologous recombination. From both the man and mo
use we have isolated an alternative spliced form of Dmc1 cDNA (Dmc1-d)
, which is deleted for a region between the two motifs involved in nuc
leotide binding, Since the alternatively spliced Dmc1-d transcript was
detected in both male and female germ cells, the encoded protein DMC1
-D may have a novel role in mammalian genetic recombination in meiosis
.