HUMAN CARDIOTROPHIN-1 - PROTEIN AND GENE STRUCTURE, BIOLOGICAL AND BINDING ACTIVITIES, AND CHROMOSOMAL LOCALIZATION

Cardiotrophin-1 (CT-1) is a new member of the interleukin-6 cytokine f amily that was identified from a mouse embryoid body cDNA library by e xpression cloning. Mouse CT-1 induces features of hypertrophy in neona tal rat cardiac myocytes and binds to and activates the leukaemia inhi bitory factor/gp130 receptor complex, In this work we report the isola tion and characterization of cDNA and genomic clones encoding human CT -1, These clones encode a 201 amino acid protein that is 80% identical to the mouse protein, Human CT-1 produced by transfection of the cDNA clones into mammalian cells induces the hypertrophy of neonatal rat c ardiac myocytes. Human and mouse CT-1 bind to the leukaemia inhibitory factor receptor on both human and mouse cell lines indicating a lack of species specificity. No binding to the human oncostatin M specific receptor was detected. A 1.7 kb CT-1 mRNA is expressed in adult human heart, skeletal muscle, ovary, colon, prostate and testis and in fetal kidney and lung. The coding region of CT-1 is contained on three exon s and is located on human chromosome 16p11.1-16p11.2. (C) 1996 Academi c Press Limited