Identification and molecular analysis of BANP

BTG3 belongs to a family of structurally related genes whose biochemical functions remain elusive. In order to investigate the mechanism underlying BTG3-mediated functions, we tried to identify BTG3 potential partners. The use of the yeast 'two-hybrid system', with BTG3 as bait, enabled us to isolate BANP (BTG3 Associated Nuclear Protein). Other commonly used protein-binding assays did not confirm this yeast interaction. However, BANP had never been described before, and this prompted us to further characterise this gene. In this paper, we present data on its molecular organization in mouse, then we speculate on the nature of this nuclear protein, and finally we localise BANP on the human chromosome 16q24 subregion; we discuss the fact that frequent loss of heterozygosity within this region has been observed in different tumours.