STRUCTURAL ORGANIZATION OF THE BOVINE CATHELICIDIN GENE FAMILY AND IDENTIFICATION OF A NOVEL MEMBER

Cathelicidins are a group of myeloid antimicrobial peptide precursors found in a variety of mammalian species, Transcripts of this family sh ow a highly conserved 5' region corresponding to the 5' untranslated r egion, signal peptide and propiece, and diverse 3' regions encoding st ructurally varied C-terminal sequences that correspond to mature antim icrobial peptides after proteolytic release from the precursors, To es tablish the size of the bovine gene family encoding these proteins, la mbda genomic clones were isolated by screening a bovine library with a probe based on the conserved cDNA region of bovine members, Restricti on mapping, hybridization studies and sequence analysis identified 11 distinct genes that based on the intergenic distances of contiguous ge nes appear to be in close physical proximity, Among these, a novel gen e encoding the precursor of a putative a-helical antimicrobial peptide was recognized and sequenced, The novel gene appears to be expressed in bovine bone marrow myeloid cells, spleen and testis. (C) 1997 Feder ation of European Biochemical Societies.