Structure of the human ubiquitin fusion gene Uba80 (RPS27a) and one of itspseudogenes

Ubiquitin is a highly conserved 76 amino acid protein that is generated in the cell by proteolysis of larger proteins containing either polyubiquitin chains or ubiquitin fused to carboxyl extension proteins (CEPs). In humans, the two human ubiquitin-CEP genes are Uba80 and Uba52, which code for ubiq uitin fused to ribosomal protein S27a and L40, respectively, Working from a recently generated physical map of human chromosome 2p16, we determined th e genetic and physical location and the genomic structure of the Uba80 gene in its entirety. A comparison of Uba80 to Uba52 revealed that the two gene s share a conserved 5'-end structure, but that the structure of the ubiquit in coding regions was not conserved. Analysis of 400 bp of the promoter of Uba80 revealed strong similarity not only to the Uba52 promoter, but also t o the other known human ribosomal gene promoters that have been identified to date. Homology searches also detected the presence of a pseudogene for U ba80, and the structure of this sequence feature is also reported. (C) 2000 Academic Press.