GENOMIC STRUCTURE AND DOMAIN ORGANIZATION OF THE HUMAN BAK GENE

The Bcl-2 homologue, Bak, is a potent inducer of apoptosis. FISH data presented here located the gene to 6p21.3. Mapping was consistent with its location centromeric of the HSET locus and approximately 400 kb f rom the MHC. The construction of a contig of genomic clones across the locus facilitated the sequencing of a PAC containing the gene. Compar ison of the gene structure to functional and physical domains revealed a good agreement between the physical structure and the intron-exon o rganisation. The position of a single intron was conserved in comparis on to other members of the Bcl-2 family, namely Bax, CED-9, Bcl-X and Bcl-2, but all other introns were displaced, consistent with a diverge nt phylogeny. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.