MOLECULAR-CLONING AND SEQUENCE-ANALYSIS OF A CHICKEN CDNA-ENCODING TYROSINASE-RELATED PROTEIN-2 DOPACHROME TAUTOMERASE/

We have cloned and sequenced a chicken cDNA encoding an L-DOPAchrome t automerase (DCT) from an embryonic melanocyte cDNA library. The chicke n DCT gene encodes a deduced protein of 516 amino acids (aas) and shar es 69.2% and 69.9% aa sequence identity with the deduced mouse and hum an DCT proteins, respectively. Northern blot hybridisation analysis re veals a DCT transcript of 3.5 kb in RNA from the retinal pigment epith elium (RPE) of chick embryos. Genomic Southern blot hybridisation anal ysis suggests that the chicken DCT gene consists of several introns an d spans between 15 and 30 kb of the chicken genome. This study complet es the sequencing of all the members of the chicken tyrosinase-related protein gene family and provides evidence that this gene family is co nserved between avians and mammals. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.