AN ALLELE-SPECIFIC ABNORMAL TRANSCRIPT OF THE HEAT-SHOCK-PROTEIN-70 GENE IN PATIENTS WITH MAJOR DEPRESSION

Stress-inducible 72-kDa heat shock proteins (HSP70) were encoded on ge nes in multiple chromosomes. The expression of mRNA transcribed from t he gene (HSP70-1) on chromosome 6 was studied using reverse-transcript polymerase chain reaction in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of pa tients with different diseases. The deletion of 29 bp occurred in 5' n oncoding and subsequent 133 bp in coding sequences of HSP70 mRNA in pa tients with major depression (n = 18), while normal subjects (n = 10) and patients with schizophrenia (n =;), essential hypertension (n = 3) , rheumatoid arthritis (n = 7), and Graves' disease (n = 3) had normal mRNA. No such deletion occurred in genomic DNA and no protein was tra nslated from deleted mRNA. The allel-specific abnormal transcript of t he HSP70 gene on chromosome 6 thus may underlie the altered stress and /or immune response in major depression. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.