[Two novel splicing variants of eIF4E obtained by electronic cloning technique combined with RT-PCR]

In order to clone the full-length cDNA of a novel EST which is probably related to acute leukemia relapse and to analyse the sequences, the electronic cloning technique combined with RT-PCR was used to clone the full-length cDNA, and the sequences were analyzed by bioinformatics. The results showed that the two novel splicing variants of eIF4E named as splicing variant 1 and 2 of eIF4E were obtained. Bioinformatics analysis showed that variant 1 and 2 exhibited 84% and 47% similarity to eIF4E mRNA, and were localized on eIF4E locus on chromosome 4. The lengths of 2 variants are 1 904 bp and 3 393 bp, encoding 245 amino acids and 132 amino acids respectively. BLAST results showed that the both variants mentioned above contains seven exons. Among them, the sequences of the three exons at 5' end of variant 1, variant 2 and eIF4E mRNA were different from each other. Protein BLAST showed that they are partially different from eIF4E protein. It is concluded that the two novel splicing variants of eIF4E were cloned, and their relation to acute leukemia relapse needs to be further investigated.