IDENTIFICATION OF A MOUSE HOMOLOG FOR THE HUMAN HEREDITARY HEMOCHROMATOSIS CANDIDATE GENE

Recently, a novel human major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I -like gene (HLA-H) was reported as a candidate gene for human heredita ry haemochromatosis, a recessive disease of iron metabolism with a rem arkably high incidence in northern Europeans, Independently we have is olated this gene in the course of a search for new human MHC class I-r elated genes and named it MR2. Here we report a mouse homolog of this human gene. The mouse MR2 gene is similar to the human counterpart wit h an overall predicted amino acid sequence similarity of similar to 66 % and it is expressed in various tissues as in human. The extra eight amino acid residues between the alpha 1 and the alpha 2 domains in the mouse molecule compared to the human counterpart can be explained by the creation of the coding sequence from the intron. While the human g ene is located at the site telomeric to the MHC region on human chromo some 6, our study indicated the translocation of the mouse homolog fro m the site telomeric to the MHC on mouse chromosome 17 to chromosome 1 3 along with other genes. This mouse gene should be important in clari fying a possible role in iron metabolism. (C) 1997 Academic Press