Characterization of pig connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) cDNA, mRNA and protein from uterine tissue

Connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) is a 38kDa mitogen and chemotactic f actor for fibroblasts that is transcriptionally activated by serum or trans forming growth factor-p and may play a role in wound healing and various sk in diseases. In these studies, pig endometrium was shown to contain a singl e CTGF transcript of 2.4kb and to produce a 38kDa CTGF-immunoreactive prote in. Cloning and sequencing of a 1.5kb pig uterine CTGF cDNA revealed that t he predicted pCTGF primary translation product displayed 92% identity to hu man CTGF and 93% identity to mouse CTGF. The pCTGF cDNA encoded a 26 amino acid signal peptide followed by a 323-residue sequence containing 38 highly conserved cysteine residues. In common with mouse and human CTGF proteins, pCTGF is predicted to resemble a multi-functional mosaic protein that cont ains four distinct modules.