Polysome immuno-adsorption, with immunoglobulin G directed against two 3-methylcholanthrene-induced mouse liver cytochrome P-450 proteins, was used to enrich mRNA from 3-methylcholanthrene-treated C57BL/6N mouse liver. cDNA transcribed from the P-450-enriched mRNA was then cloned into the Okayama-Berg vector. Two cDNA classes were detected upon differential screening of the clone bank with [ 32P]cDNA derived from 3-methylcholanthrene-induced immuno-enriched versus control mRNA. Several representatives of these two classes were judged to be near full length by comparison with their corresponding mRNA mobilities on denaturing agarose gels. A continuous reading-frame near the 5' end of one cDNA class (P 1-450) corresponds to a protein having 15 of 17 residues the same as the published N-terminal sequence of rat P-450c. A continuous reading frame near the 5' end of the other class (P 3-450) corresponds exactly to the first 25 amino acids of the published N-terminal sequence of rat P-450d. The P 1-450 cDNA is at least 700 bp longer than the P 3-450 cDNA. Heteroduplex analysis and Southern blot hybridization demonstrate that these mRNAs share approx. 1100 bp of sequence homology. Genomic P 1-450 and P 3-450 clones were isolated from a gene library constructed from C57BL/6N mouse liver DNA. By heteroduplex analysis with the corresponding cDNA, the P 1-450 gene spans about 6 kb and the P 3-450 gene about 7 kb. The intron-exon patterns are very similar, with the second and seventh exons being much larger than the other five. The 3' terminal exon of P 1-450 is about 500 bp longer than that of P 3-450. These data suggest that both P 1-450 and P 3-450 have diverged from a common ancestral gene.