A gene in the chromosomal region 3p21 with greatly reduced expression in lung cancer is similar to the gene for ubiquitin-activating enzyme

  1. K Kok,
  2. R Hofstra,
  3. A Pilz,
  4. A van den Berg,
  5. P Terpstra,
  6. C H Buys, and
  7. B Carritt
  1. Department of Medical Genetics, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

Abstract

The chromosomal region 3p21 is thought to be the site of a lung tumor suppressor gene. We recently cloned a gene from this region that has greatly reduced expression in almost all lung tumor cell lines examined, in spite of being widely expressed in a variety of other tumor and nontumor cell types. We report here the sequence of this gene and show that it has significant homology to the genes encoding the ubiquitin-activating enzymes of three species, including humans. This suggests it is a second, autosomal member of this gene family in humans and may play a role in the ubiquitin conjugation pathway, which is of central importance in all eukaryotes.

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