Structural analysis of gene loci for rat U1 small nuclear RNA

Four phage clones which hybridize with U1 small nuclear RNA were obtained from a rat gene library. Two clones contain a presumed pseudogene. A third clone includes two gene candidates that are co-linear with the rat U1-RNA, 3.6kb apart and in the opposite orientation. The two genes are surrounded by identical sequences of 491bp upstream and 178bp downstream. The upstream sequences do not contain a TATA box, but share many block homologies with those for the human U1-RNA gene(1-3). A 101bp "identifier (ID) sequence", which was reported to be specifically expressed in rat brain (4), is inserted immediately after the shared sequence downstream of one of the genes. In the fourth clone, there are two putative pseudogenes, which have one or three nucleotide changes, 3kb apart and in the same orientation. Southern blot analysis of total rat DNA reveals about 50 U1-RNA genes/pseudogenes in the genome.