The nuclear lamina is a protein meshwork lining the nucleoplasmic face of the inner nuclear membrane and represents an important determinant of interphase nuclear architecture. Its major components are the A- and B-type lamins. Whereas B-type lamins are found in all mammalian cells, A-type lamin expression is developmentally regulated. In the mouse, A-type lamins do not appear until midway through embryonic development, suggesting that these proteins may be involved in the regulation of terminal differentiation. Here we show that mice lacking A-type lamins develop to term with no overt abnormalities. However, their postnatal growth is severely retarded and is characterized by the appearance of muscular dystrophy. This phenotype is associated with ultrastructural perturbations to the nuclear envelope. These include the mislocalization of emerin, an inner nuclear membrane protein, defects in which are implicated in Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy (EDMD), one of the three major X-linked dystrophies. Mice lacking the A-type lamins exhibit tissue-specific alterations to their nuclear envelope integrity and emerin distribution. In skeletal and cardiac muscles, this is manifest as a dystrophic condition related to EDMD.
The National Institutes of Health Mammalian Gene Collection (MGC) Program is a multiinstitutional effort to identify and sequence a cDNA clone containing a complete ORF for each human and mouse gene. ESTs were generated from libraries enriched for full-length cDNAs and analyzed to identify candidate full-ORF clones, which then were sequenced to high accuracy. The MGC has currently sequenced and verified the full ORF for a nonredundant set of >9,000 human and >6,000 mouse genes. Candidate full-ORF clones for an additional 7,800 human and 3,500 mouse genes also have been identified. All MGC sequences and clones are available without restriction through public databases and clone distribution networks (see http:͞͞mgc.nci.nih.gov).T he gene content of the mammalian genome is a topic of great interest. While draft sequences are now available for the human (1, 2), mouse (www.ensembl.org͞Mus musculus), and rat (http:͞͞hgsc.bcm.tmc.edu͞projects͞rat) genomes, the challenge remains to correctly identify all of the encoded genes. Difficulty in deciphering the anatomy of mammalian genes is due to several factors, including large amounts of intervening (noncoding) sequence, the imperfection of gene-prediction algorithms (3), and the incompleteness of cDNA-sequence resources, many of which consist of gene tags of variable length and quality. Full-length cDNA sequences are extremely useful for determining the genomic structure of genes, especially when analyzed within the context of genomic sequence. To facilitate geneidentification efforts and to catalyze experimental investigation, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched the Mammalian Gene Collection (MGC) program (4) with the aim of providing freely accessible, high-quality sequences for validated, complete ORF cDNA clones. In this article, we describe our progress toward the goal of identifying and accurately sequencing at least one full ORF-containing cDNA clone for each human and mouse gene, as well as making these fully sequenced clones available without restriction. Materials and MethodscDNA Library Production. MGC cDNA libraries were prepared from a diverse set of tissues and cell lines, in several different vector systems, by using a variety of methods. Vector maps and details of library construction are available at http:͞͞mgc. nci.nih.gov͞Info͞VectorMaps. The complete sequences for each of the MGC vectors can be found at http:͞͞image.llnl.gov͞ image͞html͞vectors.shtml. The catalog of MGC cDNA libraries can be accessed at http:͞͞mgc.nci.nih.gov.
The National Institutes of Health's Mammalian Gene Collection (MGC) project was designed to generate and sequence a publicly accessible cDNA resource containing a complete open reading frame (ORF) for every human and mouse gene. The project initially used a random strategy to select clones from a large number of cDNA libraries from diverse tissues. Candidate clones were chosen based on 5'-EST sequences, and then fully sequenced to high accuracy and analyzed by algorithms developed for this project. Currently, more than 11,000 human and 10,000 mouse genes are represented in MGC by at least one clone with a full ORF. The random selection approach is now reaching a saturation point, and a transition to protocols targeted at the missing transcripts is now required to complete the mouse and human collections. Comparison of the sequence of the MGC clones to reference genome sequences reveals that most cDNA clones are of very high sequence quality, although it is likely that some cDNAs may carry missense variants as a consequence of experimental artifact, such as PCR, cloning, or reverse transcriptase errors. Recently, a rat cDNA component was added to the project, and ongoing frog (Xenopus) and zebrafish (Danio) cDNA projects were expanded to take advantage of the high-throughput MGC pipeline.
Expression of the human T cell receptor (TCR) alpha gene is regulated by a T cell-specific transcriptional enhancer that is located 4.5 kilobases (kb) 3' to the C alpha gene segment. The core enhancer contains two nuclear protein binding sites, T alpha 1 and T alpha 2, which are essential for full enhancer activity. T alpha 1 contains a consensus cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) response element (CRE) and binds a set of ubiquitously expressed CRE binding proteins. In contrast, the transcription factors that interact with the T alpha 2 site have not been defined. In this report, a lambda gt11 expression protocol was used to isolate a complementary DNA (cDNA) that programs the expression of a T alpha 2 binding protein. DNA sequence analysis demonstrated that this clone encodes the human ets-1 proto-oncogene. Lysogen extracts produced with this cDNA clone contained a beta-galactosidase-Ets-1 fusion protein that bound specifically to a synthetic T alpha 2 oligonucleotide. The Ets-1 binding site was localized to a 17-base pair (bp) region from the 3' end of T alpha 2. Mutation of five nucleotides within this sequence abolished both Ets-1 binding and the activity of the TCR alpha enhancer in T cells. These results demonstrate that Ets-1 binds in a sequence-specific fashion to the human TCR alpha enhancer and suggest that this developmentally regulated proto-oncogene functions in regulating TCR alpha gene expression.
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