Expression of a pulmonary endothelial norepinephrine transporter

To determine whether pulmonary endothelial cells express the plasma membrane norepinephrine transporter (NET), an ovine-specific riboprobe was prepared from a partial NET cDNA clone isolated by PCR from a placental cDNA library. Northern hybridization detected a predominant 5.8 kb and a weaker transcript at 3.6 kb in RNAs isolated from near-term ovine fetal pulmonary endothelial cells. These data should be useful for future studies examining the molecular mechanisms underlying pulmonary endothelial NET expression and regulation.