Cloning and molecular characterization of cDNA encoding a mouse male-enhanced antigen-2 (Mea-2): a putative family of the Golgi autoantigen.

The male-enhanced antigen-2 (Mea-2) gene was originally identified with a monoclonal histocompatibility Y (H-Y) antibody (mAb4VII). There is no report of the full length cDNA encode for Mea-2 product until this report. In this study, we isolated the full length mouse Mea-2 cDNA by screening a testis cDNA library with a PCR-amplified Mea-2 product, and direct PCR amplification of its upstream sequences from the cDNA library. The primary structure of the Mea-2 peptide, deduced from this nucleotide sequence, shows that it encode a 150 kDa protein, of 1325 amino acid residues, which contained five putative N-glycosylation sites and four leucine zipper motifs. A data bank search indicated that it has high homology with a human Golgi autoantigen (golgin-160) both in its nucleotides (78%) and amino acids sequence (83%). This suggests that Mea-2 gene product may encode a golgi structural protein. In situ hybridization analysis suggested that the Mea-2 gene is expressed in spermatids during spermatogenesis as already shown by Mea-1, suggesting that Mea-2 gene product as well as Mea-1 have also some role for spermatogenesis.