Rapid isolation of tissue-specific genes from rat kidney

A systematic effort to isolate kidney-specific genes was performed using recently described PCR-select methodology. Using this technique, a kidney-specific mini-gene library was generated and a number of kidney-specific genes that share significant homology to previously characterized kidney genes from rats and other species were isolated. These included three renal-specific transporters (an ADH water channel, the anion transporters RST and ROAT1), a cell adhesion molecule (K-cadherin) and a kidney-specific protein upregulated in renal carcinoma (DD96). In addition, we isolated two novel genes from a rat kidney. One of the genes shares limited homology to rat profilin-1 while the other did not share any similarity to genes in the Genbank. Northern blot analysis revealed that the mRNA for each of these genes is expressed in a highly kidney-restricted fashion. Our results suggested that tissue-specific genes can be rapidly isolated and characterized using PCR-select techniques and this methodology may be generally applicable to isolate specific genes from a variety of tissues.