A SYSTEMATIC SURVEY OF THE INTERGENIC REGION BETWEEN THE MURINE OXYTOCIN-ENCODING AND VASOPRESSIN-ENCODING GENES

The genomic region between the oxytocin (OT) and vasopressin (VP) gene s in the two strains of mice was independently sequenced by our two gr oups. In this report, we present our collated sequence data and analys es. The mouse intergenic region (MUIGR) was aligned to that of the rat , which has been reported to contain 6.4-kb long interspersed nuclear element (LINE). The MUIGR sequences in the two mice strains did not co ntain any LINE sequences. This suggests that the approximately 3.5-kb sequence that is conserved between the rat and mouse intergenic region s is likely to be involved in the regulation of OT and VP expression. We also observed several conserved putative transcription factor recog nition sequences. Analysis of the MUIGR revealed the lack of any signi ficant ORFs, but the presence of several repetitive elements.