A novel gene highly expressed in thyroid cancer, designated TC-1 (thyroid cancer-1), was cloned from suppression subtractive hybridization between papillary thyroid carcinoma and its surrounding normal thyroid tissue. Overexpression of TC-1 in thyroid cancer was confirmed in 15/16 paired samples by RT-PCR and Northern analysis. Ubiquitously expressed in human tissues, the TC-1 sequence showed no homology to any known gene, but matched a cluster of ESTs. After alignment of our sequence with the ESTs, the missing transcription start site was obtained by 5'-RACE and verified by primer extension analysis. The full-length mRNA sequence of 1327 bp has an open reading frame of 321 bp, which encodes a highly conserved protein. Three regulatory motifs were identified at the expected positions within 1 kb of the 5' flanking sequence obtained by genome walking. Using fluorescence in situ hybridization, TC-1 was localized to chromosome 8p11.2. The overexpression of TC-1 in papillary carcinoma suggests that it may have an important role in thyroid carcinogenesis.
Copyright 2000 Academic Press.