A New Subfamily of High Molecular Mass CDC2-Related Kinases with PITAI/VRE Motifs

Abstract

Kinases of the CDC2 family play a key role in cell cycle regulation and gene expression. In the present work, we identified sea urchin and human cDNAs encoding homologues of a high molecular mass CDC2-like kinase (designated CDC2L5) sharing respectively a PITAVRE and PITAIRE motif. The human cDNA encodes the full-length amino acid sequence of the Cholinesterase-related cell division controller (CHED) kinase, a previously published partial coding sequence. CDC2L5 overexpressed in mammalian cells is a ≈170-kDa nuclear protein. The mRNA is present during the sea urchin early embryogenesis and is ubiquitously expressed in human tissues.