Expression of preproendothelin-2 splice variant in cat

Previous studies on human uterine and placental tissues have found variants, derived from alternatively spliced mRNAs, of preproendothelin-2 (PPET2) that lack a post-translational proteolytic site essential for normal processing. Here we report a splice variant of cat PPET2 mRNA expressed in the stomach. After cloning the full-length cDNA of cat PPET2, organ distribution analysis of the transcript by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was performed. In addition to the fragment with a size predicted based on the cDNA sequence obtained by cloning, an additional PCR fragment of smaller size was detected in stomach tissue. Subsequent cloning and sequence analysis of the smaller PCR product demonstrated that it derives from a splice variant with full-length deletion of a region corresponding to exon 4 of the PPET2 gene.