Organization of the mouse acid beta-galactosidase gene

Overlapping murine genomic DNA fragments containing the entire cDNA sequence were isolated from a cosmid library prepared from the DBA/2J strain of mice. The gene is more than 80-kb long, consisting of 16 exons. All of the exon-intron boundaries have been defined. The organization of the gene is highly conserved between the murine and human genes at least for the several exons and introns for which information for the human gene is available [Morreau et al., J. Biol. Chem. 264:20655, 1989]. Primer extension and RNase protection experiments indicated the presence of three potential transcription initiation sites, which are preceded by GC-rich SP1 binding sites but without typical TATA or CAT boxes, as is often the case for genes coding for housekeeping proteins. Compared to the cDNA sequence from C57BL/6J mouse, there were five nucleotide polymorphisms in the protein-coding region, two of which resulted in altered amino acids.