Identification of a prostaglandin E2 receptor splice variant and its expression in rat tissues

The intercellular signalling actions of the lipid mediators, the eicosanoids, are transduced by a family of seven transmembrane domain receptors. Members of this receptor family with high affinity for PGE2 are termed EP receptors. There are four known EP receptor genes that are transcribed to generate EP1, EP2, EP3 and EP4 receptors. Two of these receptor transcripts, EP1 and EP3, are further modified by RNA splicing to give multiple receptor isoforms. The EP3 receptor is known to have multiple splice variants in human (9 variants), cow (4 variants), mouse (3 variants) and rat (3 variants). In the rat the three EP3 splice variants differ in the sequence of the intracellular C-terminus. We have identified a fourth splice variant of the rat prostaglandin EP3 receptor that has a greatly truncated intracellular C-terminus when compared to the other EP3 receptor isoforms. Using nested RT-PCR we have shown that this novel splice variant is strongly expressed in rat brain and is also found in spinal cord, kidney and spleen.