Molecular cloning of cDNA for the bovine urokinase-type plasminogen activator receptor

We isolated a full length cDNA clone for bovine u-PAR from a bovine aorta endothelial cell cDNA library and compared the structural properties of this receptor protein to the published human and murine sequences. The bovine u-PAR cDNA clone spans a nucleotide sequence stretch of 1335 bp. The open reading frame contains 330 amino acids with a 20 amino acid long putative signal peptide. The mature protein contains 6 potential N-linked glycosylation sites and a high cysteine content (9%). Bovine u-PAR revealed three homologous internal structural repeats. The NH2-terminal repeat containing the u-PA binding site showed 54% identity to the human and murine NH2-terminal domain, compared to 64% identity between human and mouse u-PAR. Southern blot analysis of genomic DNAs from 9 eukaryotic species suggests that the u-PAR gene is conserved in man, monkey, and cow.