HUMAN TENASCIN-C - IDENTIFICATION OF A NOVEL TYPE-III REPEAT IN ORAL-CANCER AND OF NOVEL SPLICE VARIANTS IN NORMAL, MALIGNANT AND REACTIVE ORAL MUCOSAE
Aj. Mighell et al., HUMAN TENASCIN-C - IDENTIFICATION OF A NOVEL TYPE-III REPEAT IN ORAL-CANCER AND OF NOVEL SPLICE VARIANTS IN NORMAL, MALIGNANT AND REACTIVE ORAL MUCOSAE, International journal of cancer, 72(2), 1997, pp. 236-240
Tenascin-C is a mosaic, linear glycoprotein that is upregulated during
many normal and pathological processes involving either cell migratio
n or tissue morphogenesis, such as invasion of malignant cells and wou
nd healing, Human tenascin-C contains 8 consecutive type III fibronect
in (TNCfn) domains that are involved in alternative splicing and poten
tially generate a large number of isoforms that code for tenascin-C pr
oteins with subtly different functions, Human tenascin-C splice varian
ts were investigated by RT-PCR in a range of normal and pathological o
val mucosal tissues, A novel, 9th human TNCfn domain involved in alter
native splicing was identified, It shares 70% nucleic acid and 55% pro
tein sequence homology with chicken TNCfn-ad2. As in avians, this nove
l repeat was located between TNCfn-B and TNCfn-ad1 and accordingly was
designated human TNCfn-ad2. Human TNCfn-ad2 was detected in only 2 of
IO oral cancers, However, TNCfn-ad2 was absent from 40 normal, reacti
ve, pre-malignant and other oral mucosal specimens investigated, Previ
ous studies have described 8 splice variant transcripts for human tena
scin-C. By systematic investigation we identified further novel splice
variants for human tenascin-C, Furthermore, our results indicate that
many potential splice variants probably do not exist in the tissues i
nvestigated, Thus, we have demonstrated that human tenascin-C transcri
pts generate a complex but selected repertoire of different alternativ
e splice products, (C) 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.