We have recently cloned, sequenced, and characterized a rat kidney cDNA (D2) that stimulates cystine as well as dibasic and neutral amino acid transport. In order to evaluate the role of this protein in human inherited diseases such as cystinuria, we have isolated a human D2 clone (D2H) by low stringency screening of a human kidney cDNA library using the radiolabeled D2 insert as a probe. The D2H cDNA is 2284 nucleotides long and encodes a 663 amino acid protein that is 80% identical to the rat D2 amino acid sequence and 86% to that of the rabbit homologue rBAT. Microinjection of in vitro transcribed D2H cRNA into Xenopus oocytes induced uptake of cystine as well as dibasic and neutral amino acids in a pattern similar to that of rat D2 and rabbit rBAT. Both neutral and dibasic amino acids inhibited the D2H-induced uptake of cystine. Northern blot analysis demonstrated that D2H, like D2 and rBAT, is expressed strongly in the kidney and intestine. Southern blot analysis of genomic DNA from a panel of mouse-human somatic cell hybrids showed that the human gene for D2H resides on chromosome 2.

The type 1 deiodinase (D1) provides the major portion of the circulating T3 in vertebrates. In C3H and certain other inbred mice, liver and kidney D1 activity is 5- to 10-fold lower than in the common phenotype, C57. The lower D1 levels are paralleled by a decreased normal-sized dio1 mRNA and hyperthyroxinemia. Low activity cosegregates with a restriction fragment length variant (RFLV) in both inbred and recombinant strains, indicating it is due to differences in the dio1 gene. The exonic structure and the deduced amino acid sequences are identical for both strains and highly homologous to that of the rat. The RFLV is due to an approximately 150-base pair expansion of repetitive sequences in the second intron of the C3H gene, but this segment does not differentially affect the transient expression of a human GH gene. The promoter and 5'-flanking regions of the C3H and C57 dio1 genes are very similar and are GC rich without TATA or CCAAT boxes. However, functional assays of 1.5-kilobase 5'-flanking dio1-CAT constructs showed 2- to 3-fold higher activity of the C57-CAT constructs. Deletion mutants showed that sequences between -705 and -162 were the cause of this. In this region, the only major difference between the two genes is a 21-base pair insert containing five CTG repeats in the C3H promoter. This difference also cosegregates with low D1 activity and the intron RFLV in four other mouse strains. The correlation of the CTG repeat insert with both in vitro and in vivo expression and the absence of other significant sequence differences in the 5'-flanking region argue that this is the major explanation for the impaired expression of the dio1 gene and the resulting hyperthyroxinemia of the C3H mouse.