Isolation and preliminary characterization of the human and mouse homologues of the bacterial cell cycle gene era

Era is an essential GTPase that is required for proper cell cycle progressi on and cell division in Escherichia coli and is found in nearly all bacteri a sequenced to date. To determine whether Era is also present in eukaryotic organisms, we searched the dbEST database and found EST clones coding for proteins that were similar to Era. Full sequencing of these ESTs from human and mouse identified a conserved homologue, ERAL1 (Era-like I). ERAL1 maps to 17q11.2 in human and is located in the syntenic region of mouse chromos ome II. ERAL1 may be an attractive candidate for a tumor suppressor gene si nce ERAL1 is located in a chromosomal region Ts here loss of heterozygosity is often associated with various types of cancer. (C) 2000 Academic Press.