Evidence that the phl gene encodes a 160,000-dalton phosphoprotein with associated kinase activity.

In chronic myelocytic leukemia, the human c-abl oncogene is translocated from chromosome 9 to a region on chromosome 22 designated as the breakpoint cluster region (bcr) (A. de Klein, A. Guerts van Kessel, G. Grosveld, C. R. Bartram, A. Hagemeyer, D. Bootsma, N. K. Spurr, N. Heisterkamp, J. Groffen, and J. R. Stephenson, Nature (London) 300:765-767, 1982; J. Groffen, J. R. Stephenson, N. Heisterkamp, A. de Klein, C. R. Bartram, and G. Grosveld, Cell 36:93-99.) Abnormal c-abl homologous mRNA and protein have been detected in the leukemic cells of patients with chronic myelocytic leukemia (E. Canaani, D. Stein-Saltz, E. Aghai, R. P. Gale, A. Berrebi, and E. Januszewicz, Lancet 1:593-595, 1984; S. J. Collins and M. T. Groudine, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 80:4813-4817, 1983; R. P. Gale and E. Canaani, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 81:5648-5652, 1984; J. B. Konopka, S. M. Watanabe, J. W. Singer, S. J. Collins, and O. N. Witte, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 82:1810-1814, 1985). The abnormal mRNA represents a chimeric transcript consisting of 5' bcr and 3' c-abl sequences (G. Grosveld, J. Verwoerd, T. van Agthoven, A. de Klein, K. L. Ramachandran, N. Heisterkamp, K. Stam, and J. Groffen, Mol. Cell. Biol. 6:607-616, 1986; E. Shtivelman, B. Lifshitz, R. B. Gale, and E. Canaani, Nature (London) 315:550-554, 1985; K. Stam, N. Heisterkamp, G. Grosveld, A. de Klein, R. S. Verma, M. Coleman, H. Dosik, and J. Groffen, N. Engl. J. Med. 313:1429-1433, 1985). In the present study, we demonstrated that the abnormal c-abl protein is a fusion protein. In addition, the normal gene encompassing bcr sequences was shown to encode a 160,000-dalton phosphoprotein with an associated serine or threonine kinase activity. We propose that this gene be designated phl, reserving the term bcr for the region within the phl gene encompassing the Ph' translocation breakpoints.