Analysis of a human gene homologous to rat ventral prostate.1 protein

We report on the analysis of a human gene homologous to the rat ventral prostate.1 protein (RVP.1), which is transcriptionally induced in the regressing rat prostate after castration. EST database searching and Northern blotting reveal that this is one of at least four different members of a gene family in the human genome that produce transcripts of 3.4, 2.4, 1.9, and 1.2 kb, expressed in a wide range of tissues. Three other members of this gene family have already been mapped to chromosomes 7q, 17p, and 22q and reported either as anonymous ESTs or as full-length clones. We have now characterized a fourth member (assigned the gene now characterized a fourth member (assigned the gene name C7orf1 by GDB) and localized it also to chromosome 7q. C7orf1 is almost identical over much of its length to the reported ORF of RVP.1 while the other family members are more divergent from RVP.1. The genomic sequence of C7orf1 is intron-less, is spanned by a CpG low-methylation island, and has two noncoding, nonpolymorphic STR regions immediately adjacent to the open reading frame, one 5' and one 3'. The presence of a NotI restriction site in the coding sequence results in a deficiency in the IMAGE cDNA libraries, as a result of which the 3' end of the gene is not in the EST databases. The putative 220-amino-acid protein shows 89% identity to the amino terminus of rat RVP.1. Like rat RVP.1, it has four hydrophobic potential membrane-spanning regions, but it lacks 60 amino acid residues at its carboxyl terminus relative to rat RVP.1. Nevertheless, gene-specific primers from this transcript amplified a product in human cDNAs from several different tissues; its size corresponds to the 1.2-kb transcript seen on a Northern blot, and identical ESTs from several different tissues exist in the databases. It therefore seems likely that C7orf1 is the closest human homologue of rat RVP.1.