Hypervariability of the membrane-associated mucin and cancer marker MUC1

The highly heterogeneous epithelial mucins show considerable inter-individual variability attributable to allelic variations in their tandem repeat (TR) peptide domains. Most mucins are known to show variations in repeat number but variation in the sequence of the individual TRs is not as well characterised. Here, we have studied variation in the immunodominant PDTR motif in the TR domain of the membrane-associated "cancer" mucin MUC1 by using the Minisatellite Variant Repeat-Polymerase chain reaction (MVR-PCR) technique. We have fully or partially mapped two nucleotide changes that encode two amino-acid changes, PDTR to PESR, across the arrays of 149 alleles. A total of 103 different maps was obtained when these changes alone were considered and additional variations were also observed. Most maps showed blocks of PDTR repeats interspersed with PESR repeats, although these were possibly more irregular in the longer alleles that also tended to have more PESR repeats. This variability has potential functional consequences and possible implications for some individuals with respect to the efficacy of immune targetting and immune therapy.