ISOLATION AND MAPPING OF A HUMAN GENE (RABL) ENCODING A SMALL GTP-BINDING PROTEIN HOMOLOGOUS TO THE RAS-RELATED RAB GENE

Many subgroups of the RAB gene, a member of the RAS superfamily have b een identified. Here we report the isolation and analysis of a cDNA en coding a putative small GTP-binding protein, designated RABL, from a h uman fetal lung cDNA library. RABL encodes 216 amino acids that are 86 % identical to members of the RAB5 subfamily and it shows 94% homology in nucleotide sequence with RAB5C of dog. This gene was expressed ubi quitously in all human tissues examined. By fluorescence in situ hybri dization we mapped RABL to chromosome band 17q21.2.