A rabbit liver cDNA library in phage lambda gt10 was screened using a portion of the coding sequences for rabbit cytosolic serine hydroxymethyltransferase (amino acids 244-420) that had been amplified by PCR, with total rabbit liver RNA as a template. A clone of 2.3 kb (pUS1203) was isolated and the nucleotide sequence showed that it contained an open reading frame of 1452 bp, which coded for serine hydroxymethyltransferase and was flanked by 155 bp at the 5' end and 653 bp at the 3' end. The full-length cDNA was cloned into an expression vector and transfected into COS-1 cells. Serine hydroxymethyltransferase activity was increased by 33% in the transfected cells and a new protein band of the appropriate size was seen by SDS/PAGE analysis of proteins extracted from transfected cells. The protein sequence for rabbit cytosolic serine hydroxymethyltransferase derived from the cDNA nucleotide sequence was compared with three other derived or known prokaryotic and eukaryotic sequences. An overall sequence similarity of 34% was noted between all four sequences, whereas the similarity between the rabbit cytosolic and mitochondrial isoforms was 62%.