Cloning and developmental expression analysis of the murine c-mer tyrosine kinase.

We have cloned the putative mouse homologue of the human c-mer receptor tyrosine kinase proto-oncogene. Comparison of the mouse and human c-mer amino acid sequences reveals an overall identity of 88%. Similar to the human, the extracellular region of the murine c-mer protein possesses two amino terminal immunoglobulin-like domains and two membrane proximal fibronectin type III domains, which places it in the Axl family of tyrosine kinases. Our analysis of the Axl family identifies eight different regions of amino acid consensus that have residues characteristic of this and no other tyrosine kinase family; six of the eight are within tyrosine kinase subdomains. The homology within the Axl family is highest between c-mer and c-eyk, the chicken proto-oncogene of the tumor virus gene product v-eyk. Northern analysis of adult tissues suggests that the mouse c-mer, although expressed in many tissues, has an expression pattern unique among Axl family members. In normal adult hematopoietic cells c-mer seems to be expressed predominantly if not exclusively in the monocytic lineage. Mouse c-mer is expressed during most, if not all, stages of embryological development beginning in the morula and blastocyst and progressing through the yolk sac and fetal liver stages. This early and consistent expression of c-mer was confirmed during in vitro differentiation of embryonic stem cells. The embryonic expression profile of c-mer suggests that this tyrosine kinase may play an important function in the developing mouse.