Isolation of a cDNA that encodes the peptide core of the secretory granule proteoglycan of rat basophilic leukemia-1 cells and assessment of its homology to the human analogue.

It has been previously shown that a single gene is used to encode the peptide core of the extracellular proteoglycan of rat L2 yolk sac tumor cells and the intracellular proteoglycan of rat basophilic leukemia (RBL)-1 cells. In order to determine if the predicted amino acid sequences of these proteoglycans are identical as well as to isolate a full length cDNA encoding a rat secretory granule proteoglycan, a cDNA library was prepared from RBL-1 cells and screened with the 165-base pair 5'----XmnI fragment of pPG-1, a partial cDNA which encodes the rat L2 cell proteoglycan peptide core. Based on the consensus nucleotide sequence of two full length RBL-1 cell-derived cDNAs, the 5' untranslated region of the mRNA that is expressed in RBL-1 cells is shorter than that expressed in the rat L2 cells although the coding regions of the mRNAs from the two cell types are identical. These findings indicate that the targeting of proteoglycans to an intracellular or extracellular compartment is a cell-specific event which is independent of the translated peptide core. Since the RBL-1 cell and the rat L2 cell proteoglycans have different types of glycosaminoglycans bound to them, it can also be concluded that the selection of the type of glycosaminoglycan that will be synthesized onto a peptide core is a cell-specific event which is not exclusively dependent on the translated peptide core. When the predicted amino acid sequence of the RBL-1 cell proteoglycan peptide core was compared to the predicted sequence of the homologous human molecule from HL-60 cells, 48% of the amino acids were identical. The N terminus was the most highly conserved area of the molecule. This region of the peptide core, which precedes the serine-glycine repeat region, is likely to be of critical importance for the biosynthesis and/or function of these proteoglycans. Analysis of 10 different mouse/hamster somatic cell hybrid lines with a SspI----3' fragment of the rat L2 cell cDNA revealed that, as in the human, the gene that encodes the mouse analogue of this peptide core resides on chromosome 10.