Objective: To clone and identify novel mouse aging-related genes.
Methods: The improved differential display reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction method was used to analyze the differential expression of old and young BALB/C mouse cortex tissues. The novel expression sequence targets (EST) with differential expression were further confirmed by Northern blot and used as original sequence to clone the full-length cDNA sequence by bioinformatics technique. The reverse transcription products of BALB/C mouse cortex total RNA was used as the amplification template.
Results: A total of 42 differentially expressed EST were obtained. Homologic analysis showed that 29 EST represented known cDNAs and 13 were probably new EST. One of the EST, which were confirmed to have down regulative expression in the old mouse cortex tissues by Northern blot analysis, was used to obtain the full-length cDNA sequences from reverse transcription products of total RNA of BALB/C mice cortex by bioinformation method. A 1 382 bp of cDNA sequence including the EST was obtained and designed as Arzc (GenBank accession number: AY344585). The Arzc cDNA contains an open reading frame of 261 bp and encodes a peptide of 86 amino acids residuals. FASTA analysis showed that the deduced peptide had a homology with a portion of integrase/recombinase, a member of a phage integrase family.
Conclusion: A novel mouse gene that is probably related to aging was identified and cloned.