Expression of c-mos proto-oncogene transcripts in mouse tissues

Valuable information about proto-oncogenes and their physiological function has been obtained by studying their expression in normal cells. However, expression of the c-mos gene, the cellular homologue of the transforming gene of Moloney murine sarcoma virus, has not been detected in normal mouse cells or tissues. The conservation of the c-mos open reading frame strongly indicates that the gene must function during some portion of the animal life cycle, and other lines of evidence suggested to us that the c-mos proto-oncogene may be expressed at very low levels in normal tissues. We have used a sensitive S1 nuclease assay to screen RNA preparations from mouse tissues and describe here the detection of c-mos-related transcripts especially in mouse embryos, testes and ovaries. The transcripts found in testis RNA are estimated to be approximately 1.7 kilobases (kb) long by Northern analysis. S1 analysis demonstrated that the entire mos open reading frame is present. In contrast, we detect approximately 1.4-kb transcripts in ovary RNA and at least two major transcripts, approximately 2.3 and approximately 1.3 kb, in embryo RNA. The latter transcripts have in common sequences of at least 1 kb, representing most of the c-mos open reading frame. The variation in size of the mos transcript in different tissues suggests a novel regulatory mechanism for the expression of this proto-oncogene.