Cloning and characterization of the rat NADPH-cytochrome P-450 oxidoreductase gene.

Abstract

A rat liver DNA genomic library was prepared using the lambda phage cloning vector Charon 28. Recombinant phage were screened with a cDNA clone (pOR-7) containing sequences complementary to mRNA coding for NADPH-cytochrome P-450 oxidoreductase. This cDNA clone contains the poly(A) addition site and 60% of the mRNA sequence (Gonzalez, F. J., and Kasper, C. B. (1982) J. Biol. Chem. 257, 5962-5968). Four positive phage were identifed and plaque-purified, and their DNA was isolated and subjected to restriction endonuclease mapping. All phage DNA inserts, which ranged from 11 to 16 kilobases, contained several overlapping restriction fragments. The clone with the largest insert (lambda OR-2) was found to contain restriction fragments identical with those of rat DNA when both were subjected to Southern blotting with nick-translated pOR-7 DNA; this finding established the presence in lambda OR-2 of the 3' end (poly(A) addition site) of the oxidoreductase gene. When [32P]cDNA synthesized from enriched oxidoreductase poly(A) RNA was utilized as a probe, additional fragments were identified. The fragment most distal to the 3'-specific fragment was assumed to contain the 5' cap site and was subcloned into pBR322 for further analysis. Restriction mapping and Southern blot analysis further localized the 5' end of the gene to an AvaII fragment of 540 base pairs (bp). Hybridization of this fragment with oxidoreductase mRNA-enriched poly(A) RNA resulted in the arrest of translation of oxidoreductase; this confirmed that it contained an exon region of the oxidoreductase gene. S1 nuclease mapping and DNA sequencing identified to within +/- 1 bp the 5' cap site of the gene which corresponds to an A start. DNA sequencing of the 5'p flanking region revealed no "TATA box" in the vicinity of -25 to -30 bp of the cap site. R-loop analysis of lambda OR-2 revealed the presence of a minimum of seven introns in the 6000-bp oxidoreductase gene and eight exons with a total length of approximately 2600 bp.