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The structure and evolution of the human salivary proline-rich protein gene family

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Abstract

We present the nucleotide sequences of four members of the six-member human salivary prolinerich protein (PRP) gene family. The four genes are PRB1 and PRB2, which encode basic PRPs, and PRB3 and PRB4, which encode glycosylated PRPs. Each PRB gene is approximately 4.0 kb in length and contains four exons, the third of which is entirely composed of 63-bp tandem repeats and encodes the proline-rich portion of the protein products. Exon 3 contains different numbers of tandem repeats in the different PRB genes. Variation in the numbers of these repeats is also responsible for length variations in different alleles of the PRB genes. We have determined a probable evolutionary history of the human PRP gene family by comparing the nucleotide sequences of the six PRP genes. The present-day six PRP loci probably evolved from a single ancestral gene by four sequential gene duplications, leading to six genes that fall into three subsets, each consisting of two genes. During this evolutionary process, multiple rearrangements and gene conversion occurred mainly in the region from the 3′ end of IVS2 and the 3′ end of exon 3.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pathology, University of North Carolina, CB7525, Brinkhous-Bullitt Building, 27599, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA

    Oliver Smithies & Nobuyo Maeda

  2. Department of Cell Biology, Vanderbilt University Medical School, 37232, Nashville, Tennessee, USA

    Karen M. Lyons

  3. Department of Oral Biochemistry, Nippon Dental University, Niigata 1-8 Hamauro-CHO, 951, Niigata, Japan

    Hyung Suk Kim & Eiichi Saitoh

  4. Department of Medicine, University of Wisconsin, 53706, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

    Edwin A. Azen

  5. Department of Medical Genetics, University of Wisconsin, 53706, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

    Edwin A. Azen

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  1. Hyung Suk Kim
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  2. Karen M. Lyons
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  3. Eiichi Saitoh
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  4. Edwin A. Azen
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  5. Oliver Smithies
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  6. Nobuyo Maeda
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Kim, H.S., Lyons, K.M., Saitoh, E. et al. The structure and evolution of the human salivary proline-rich protein gene family. Mammalian Genome 4, 3–14 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00364656

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00364656

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