STRUCTURAL ORGANIZATION OF THE REDUCED FOLATE CARRIER GENE IN CHINESE-HAMSTER OVARY CELLS

The reduced folate carrier gene (rfc) encodes a putative protein that is involved in the intracellular accumulation of folates. in this repo rt, we describe the organization of the I fe gene from Chinese hamster ovary cells. The hamster rfc gene contains ? exons and 6 introns, whi ch span 15.3 kilobases. It codes for two alternatively spliced messeng er RNAs, one that, contains all 7 exons and one that lacks exon 2 but contains the remaining 6 exons. Tile transcriptional start of the gene has been mapped to six sites approximately 200 base pairs upstream of the putative ATG initiation codon. The promoter region has no TATA bo x-like sequence but contains a consensus Spl binding site, This is the first report of the genomic structure of the reduced folate carrier g ene from any species.