A novel pancreatic beta-cell isoform of calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (beta 3 isoform) contains a proline-rich tandem repeat in the association domain.

There is evidence for a role for calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein phosphorylation in regulation of insulin secretion but the molecular nature of the kinase(s) responsible is unknown. In this study, the screening of a neonatal rat islet cDNA library resulted in the isolation of a 2 kb clone that was 99% homologous to the beta' isoform of calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II. The predicted 589 amino acid sequence with a calculated mass of 64,976 Da contained a 24 amino acid deletion in addition to the 15 amino acid deletion that differentiates the beta' from the beta isoform, and included an 86 amino acid novel domain consisting of a tandem repeat of proline-rich residues. The expression of this new isoform of calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (beta 3) was confirmed in beta-cell lines and testis by DNA amplification of the sequence encoding the inserted domain by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction, followed by Southern analysis.