title: Intron/exon organization and polymorphisms of the PLK3/PRK gene in human lung carcinoma cell lines.
abstract: PLK3/PRK, a conserved polo family protein serine/threonine kinase, plays a significant role at the onset of mitosis and mitotic progression. Recently, PLK3/PRK has been shown to induce apoptosis when overexpressed in cell lines and is also implicated in cell proliferation and tumor development. Forty lung tumor cell lines were used for single-strand confirmation polymorphism (SSCP) analysis and DNA sequencing to examine the mutational status of PLK3/PRK. No missense or nonsense mutations were revealed in the lung carcinoma cell lines examined. However, three polymorphisms were identified as: a G to A at position 720, an A to G at 1053, and a G to C at 1275. Intron/exon boundaries were determined by amplification of genomic DNA with PLK3/PRK exon-specific primers. The amplification products with increased size relative to the cDNA were sequenced. Fifteen exons throughout the open reading frame were characterized. None of the introns were exceptionally large, typically ranging from 100-300 basepairs in length. These results suggest that although PLK3/PRK expression is downregulated in a majority of lung carcinoma samples, mutational inactivation of the coding sequence of the PLK3/PRK gene appears to be a rare event in lung cancer.
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Health, University of Cincinnati, College of Medicine, Cincinnati, Ohio 45267-0056, USA. wiestjs@ucmail.uc.edu
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wiest
authors.forename: A M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Clark
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Dai
mesh_terms: D002277:Carcinoma / Q000235:genetics* / Q000473:pathology; D018797:Cell Cycle Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D005091:Exons / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D007438:Introns / Q000235:genetics*; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics* / Q000473:pathology; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic / Q000235:genetics*; D017346:Protein Serine-Threonine Kinases / Q000235:genetics*; D014407:Tumor Cells, Cultured; D025521:Tumor Suppressor Proteins; D000097868:Polo-like Kinases
chemical_list: D018797:Cell Cycle Proteins; D017346:Protein Serine-Threonine Kinases; D025521:Tumor Suppressor Proteins; C486256:PLK3 protein, human; D000097868:Polo-like Kinases