Novel putative protein tyrosine phosphatases identified by the polymerase chain reaction.

Protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPases) are a family of enzymes that specifically dephosphorylate phosphotyrosyl residues in selected protein substrates. To more fully understand the regulatory role of protein tyrosine phosphorylation and dephosphorylation in cellular signal transduction, characterization of PTPases is essential. Using the polymerase chain reaction and degenerate oligonucleotide primers corresponding to conserved amino acid sequences within the catalytic domain of PTPases, we have identified 11 PTPase-related human liver cDNA sequences. Five of these have not been described previously. These results indicate that, like protein tyrosine kinases, PTPases may also comprise a gene family with a large number of members.