MOUSE AND HUMAN NEURONAL PENTRAXIN-1 (NPTX1) - CONSERVATION, GENOMIC STRUCTURE, AND CHROMOSOMAL LOCALIZATION

We have previously identified novel members of the pentraxin family (n euronal pentraxin 1 and 2) that are expressed in the nervous system. N euronal pentraxin 1 (NP1) was identified as a rat protein that may med iate the uptake of synaptic material and the presynaptic snake venom t oxin, taipoxin. NP2 was identified as a separate gene discovered by sc reening for a human homolog for NP1. Here, we report human cDNA and mo use genomic DNA sequences for NP1 (gene symbol NPTX1). Human NP1 and m ouse NP1 show 95 and 99% amino acid identity, respectively, with rat N P1 and conserve all potential glycosylation sites. Like rat NP1, human NP1 message is large (6.5 kb) and is exclusively localized to the ner vous system. The mouse NP1 gene is 13 kb in length and contains four i ntrons that break the coding sequence of NP1 in the same positions as the introns of the human NP2 gene. The human and mouse NP1 genes are l ocalized to chromosome 17q25.1-q25.2 and chromosome 11e2-e1.3, respect ively. These data demonstrate the existence of a separate family of pe ntraxin proteins that are expressed in the human brain and other tissu es and that may play important roles in the uptake of extracellular ma terial. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.