Cloning and sequencing of mouse skeletal muscle alpha-dystroglycan.

alpha-Dystroglycan has attracted much interest due to its important function in linking laminin in the extracellular matrix and dystrophin in the muscle. The complete sequence of mouse skeletal muscle alpha-dystroglycan was produced and cloned by applying the reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction approach to the total RNA extracted from the mouse myogenic cell line C2C12. The results demonstrate the usefulness of this approach and the high degree of conservation of alpha-dystroglycan between different species, and they provide the basis for additional work with the murine species.