title: Isolation and sequence analysis of human cadherin-6 complementary DNA for the full coding sequence and its expression in human carcinoma cells.
abstract: The expression pattern of E- and P-cadherin in human carcinomas has been reported by many laboratories. However, little is known about the involvement of other cadherin types in human carcinomas. cDNA clones for a cadherin molecule were isolated from a cDNA library of human hepatocellular carcinoma cells which lacked E- and P-cadherin expression but exhibited cell aggregation activity mediated by an unknown cadherin, and they were subjected to sequence analysis. The overlapped clones covered 4315 nucleotides and were found to encode a typical cadherin molecule consisting of 790 amino acids. Since the deduced amino acid sequence was identical to a partially available human cadherin-6 sequence except for two amino acid residues, the clones were considered to be human cadherin-6 cDNAs encoding the entire open reading frame. The deduced amino acid sequence also showed extremely high homology with recently reported rat K-cadherin, 97% for the putative mature protein, suggesting that cadherin-6 is the human counterpart of rat K-cadherin. Expression of cadherin-6 in various human normal tissues and carcinoma cells was examined by Northern blot analysis using a specific probe corresponding to the signal and precursor sequence. Among normal tissues examined, brain, cerebellum, and kidney showed strong expression of cadherin-6, whereas lung, pancreas, and gastric mucosa showed weak expression. Transcripts of cadherin-6 were not detected in normal liver, whereas four of six hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines examined expressed cadherin-6 abundantly. As reported for rat K-cadherin, three renal carcinoma cell lines also expressed cadherin-6 strongly. The most interesting finding was obtained for small cell lung carcinoma lines. Among 15 of such cell lines examined, all of 11 cadherin-6-positive lines were classified into the classic type, whereas the negative cell lines were all of the variant type. The present results suggest that besides E- and P-cadherin, other cadherin molecules are expressed in human cancers and are responsible for additional biological properties of the carcinoma cells.
authors.affiliation: Hirohashi Cell Configuration Project, ERATO, Research Development Corporation of Japan (JRDC), Tsukuba.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shimoyama
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gotoh
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Terasaki
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kitajima
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hirohashi
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D015152:Blotting, Northern; D015820:Cadherins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D018076:DNA, Complementary / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D014407:Tumor Cells, Cultured
chemical_list: D015820:Cadherins; D018076:DNA, Complementary; C087310:K cadherin