2-Oxoglutarate dehydrogenase (lipoamide) (( OGDH: 2-oxoglutarate:lipoamide 2-oxidoreductase (decarboxylating and acceptor-succinylating), EC 1.2.4.2 )) is a component enzyme of the 2-oxoglutarate dehydrogenase complex. We have cloned a human cDNA encoding OGDH from a fetal liver cDNA library by plaque hybridization with a mixture of oligonucleotide probes designed from the amino acid sequences of porcine OGDH. This cDNA spans 4156 bases and contains an open reading frame of 3009 nucleotides encoding a presequence of 40 amino acid residues and a mature protein of 963 amino acid residues (Mr = 108,642). The size of the mRNA is approximately 4.2 kilobases. Comparison of the deduced amino acid sequence of the human OGDH with experimentally determined segments of porcine OGDH comprising 308 amino acid residues shows 93% sequence identity. The human OGDH has 37% sequence identity with 933 amino acid residues of the Escherichia coli OGDH and 40% sequence identity with 1014 residues of the yeast OGDH.