Use of an in silico approach to define the gene structure of eukaryotic adenylyl cyclases

The limited information available regarding the gene structure of adenylyl cyclases (AC), which catalyze the synthesis of cAMP, suggests a complex arr angement with many exons and large introns such that molecular techniques t o define these gene structures are time- and labor-intensive. We report her e the use of a computer-based approach involving the assembly of fragmented sequence data generated by the Human Genome Project and nucleic acid analy sis software to decipher the gene structure of human and murine AC 6 and ot her human AC isoforms (ACs 3, 7, and 8), The results, which document 21 exo ns in human and murine AC 6, human AC 3, 18 exons in AC 8, and 24 exons in AC 7, show substantial conservation of exon organization in the AC family a nd in particular regions of the AC protein, Application of such in silico m ethods should prove useful to characterize genes for other ACs and protein families and data provided here should facilitate studies of polymorphisms in AC genes. (C) 2001 Academic Press.