Structure and drug inducibility of the human cytochrome P-450c gene

A human genomic clone (lambda hP-450mc-1), highly homologous to the rat cytochrome P-450c gene, was isolated and analyzed for the complete nucleotide sequence. The gene structure coincides with that of a recently reported human gene isolated from genomic DNA of a human breast carcinoma cell line, MCF-7 [Jaiswal, A.K., Gonzalez, F.J. & Nebert, D.W. (1985) Nucleic Acids Res. 13, 4503-4520] with notable exceptions in the first intron: a 320-base-pair fragment is inserted and a 650-base-pair fragment is deleted in the gene examined in the present study. The 320-base-pair insert appears to contain a moderately repetitive sequence (approx. 140 copies) in the human genome. The 650-base-pair fragment, present in intron 1 of the reported sequence, is dislocated in the lambda hP-450mc-1 to about 10(4) base pairs upstream from the putative transcription initiation site. The results of Southern blot analysis using human total DNA were compatible with the gene structure of lambda hP-450mc-1. A fusion gene, which was constructed by ligating the 5' flanking region of the gene to the structural gene for prokaryotic chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT), inducibly expressed the CAT activity in mouse Hepa-1 cells in response to administered methylcholanthrene, indicating that the isolated human gene is indeed of methylcholanthrene inducibility.