Ss. Zhang et al., MOLECULAR-CLONING OF THE GENE ENCODING NUCLEAR-DNA HELICASE-II - A BOVINE HOMOLOG OF HUMAN RNA HELICASE-A AND DROSOPHILA MLE-PROTEIN, The Journal of biological chemistry, 270(27), 1995, pp. 16422-16427
Nuclear DNA helicase II (NDH II) unwinds both DNA and RNA (Zhang, S.,
and Grosse, F. (1994) Biochemistry 33, 3906-3912). Here, we report on
the molecular cloning and sequence determination of the complementary
DNA (cDNA) coding for this DNA and RNA helicase. The full-length cDNA
sequence was derived from overlapping clones that were detected by imm
unoscreening of a calf thymus cDNA library in bacteriophage lambda gt1
1. This cDNA was 4,528 bases in length, which corresponded well with a
4.5-4.7-kilobase-long mRNA as detected by Northern blot analysis. The
open reading frame of NDH II cDNA predicts a polypeptide of 1287 amin
o acids and a calculated molecular mass of 141,854 daltons. NDH II is
related to a group of nucleic acid helicases from the DEAD/H box famil
y II, with the signature motif DEIH in domain II. Two further proteins
of this family, i.e. human RNA helicase A and Drosophila Maleless (Ml
e) protein, were found to be highly homologous to NDH II. With RNA hel
icase A, there was 91.5% identity and 95.5% similarity between the ami
no acid residues; with Mle protein, we observed a 50% identity and an
85% similarity. Antibodies against human RNA helicase A crossreacted w
ith NDH II, further supporting that NDH II is the bovine homologue of
human RNA helicase A. Immunofluorescence studies revealed a mainly nuc
lear localization of NDH II. A role for NDH II in nuclear DNA and RNA
metabolism is suggested.