Researches On Isolating And Identifying Novel Human Genes

Cell cycle regulation is one of the most important and complicated life phenomena for all cells. The cell division will become deviant and the normal function of animals will be affected abnomally as soon as there are some problems on the stages of cell cycle regulation. As some cell cycle factors which had been studied by most researchers, CDK protein kinases and cyclins are the core proteins in a regulating pathway to function mainly during the G2-M transition of cell division. The newly studies showed that some other Ser/Thr protein kinases sampled by NIMA (encoded by nimA of Aspergillus. nidulans) have the same functions as CDK protein kinases and cyclins do. A conservative nimA gene family was found in most organisms and a conservative nek family in advanced mammalias was obvious. The neks genes may functioned in the G2-M transition and some serious diseases including PKD will caused while it's knocked out in the rats.In order to clone other human members of nek family, we gained a probe from human placenta cDNA library by PCR. A novel gene (i.e NEK6) has been isolated at last by using this probe to screen the human placeta cDNA library. This gene's complete ORF encodes a protein, which is composed with 306 animo acids. The results of gene and protein sequences' Blastzing in the GeneBank data testified that NEK6 was an unreported gene. Its assession number is AF087909 Its functional part in N terminal has 39.32% identity with mouse NEK1 's. In most tissues (except colon tissue), NEK6 gene expressed a 1.6kb transcript and much more in ovary tissue than in testis tissue. NEK6 gene was laterly mapped to the chromosome 9q33.3-43.11 by Radiation Hybrid mapping. These primary results show that NEK6 is a true member of nek gene family and it may function as an enzyme just like the Ser/Thr protein kinases in the cell division regulation.