A novel receptor tyrosine phosphatase-sigma that is highly expressed in the nervous system

A novel transmembrane receptor protein tyrosine phosphatase-sigma (RPTP-sigma) was cloned from a rat brain stem cDNA library. The extracellular segment of one form of RPTP-sigma contains 824 amino acids and is composed of three immunoglobulin-like and five fibronectin type III (FNIII)-like repeats. The 627-amino acid cytoplasmic region of RPTP-sigma consists of two catalytic domains oriented in tandem. Northern blot analyses indicate that RPTP-sigma is highly expressed in the brain as two major transcripts of 5.7 and 6.9 kilobases (kb). The 5.7-kb transcript is expressed exclusively in the brain while the 6.9-kb species can be detected in the lung and heart, but at significantly lower levels. In situ hybridization studies confirm that RPTP-sigma is localized predominantly in the nervous system and can be detected in the rat as early as embryonic day 12. During embryonic development, RPTP-sigma is expressed extensively in the central and peripheral nervous systems, including the trigeminal and dorsal root ganglia as well as the retina. In adult rat brain, expression is restricted primarily to the olfactory tubercule, cerebellum, and hippocampus. Within the latter structure, RPTP-sigma is present in the pyramidal cell layer and granular layer of the dentate gyrus. Transfection of RPTP-sigma cDNA into human embryonic kidney 293 cells results in the synthesis of a protein with an apparent molecular mass of 200 kDa as detected by immunoprecipitation and immunoblot analyses using polyclonal antibodies against the FNIII-like repeats present in the extracellular domain of RPTP-sigma. The gene for RPTP-sigma has been mapped to distal chromosome 17 in the mouse.