title: Evidence that caspase-13 is not a human but a bovine gene.
abstract: Caspase-13 was reported to be a member of the human caspase family of proteases (Humke, E., et al., J. Biol. Chem. 273, 15702-15707, 1998). By contrast, a recent study (Lin, X., et al., J. Biol. Chem. 275, 39920-39926, 2000) could not confirm caspase-13 expression in human tissues. When we searched the GenBank database we found several expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from bos taurus completely matching the published caspase-13 sequence. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis revealed that bovine but not human peripheral blood mononuclear cells express caspase-13. From these cells we cloned two bovine caspase-13 splice variants and found that the sequence of the larger variant was identical to the mRNA published by Humke et al. Our findings strongly suggest that the previously published caspase-13 sequence is not of human origin but represents a bovine gene.
authors.affiliation: Division of Immunology, Allergy, and Infectious Diseases, University of Vienna Medical School, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Koenig
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Eckhart
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Tschachler
mesh_terms: D017398:Alternative Splicing; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D020169:Caspases / Q000235:genetics*; D002417:Cattle; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D018076:DNA, Complementary / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D006801:Humans; D007527:Isoenzymes / Q000235:genetics; D007963:Leukocytes, Mononuclear / Q000737:chemistry; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000235:genetics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D017385:Sequence Homology; D013045:Species Specificity
chemical_list: D018076:DNA, Complementary; D007527:Isoenzymes; D012333:RNA, Messenger; D020169:Caspases; C112920:caspase 13