CLONING AND CHARACTERIZATION OF MURINE CD6

The lymphocyte antigen CD6 has been extensively studied in humans, but has not been reported in mouse. Here we describe the isolation and ch aracterization of a cDNA clone encoding the murine homologue of the hu man lymphocyte antigen CD6. Comparison of the predicted amino acid seq uence of human and murine CD6 shows that the cytoplasmic domain of mur ine CD6 is 160 residues longer than that of the human protein. Inspect ion of the 3' untranslated sequence of the human CD6 clone and the gen omic organization of the murine CD6 gene suggests the expression of di fferentially spliced CD6 polypeptides in both species.