An aberrant lck mRNA in two human T-cell lines

Abstract

Low stringency screening of a human T-cell cDNA library with a c-src probe resulted in the isolation of several cDNAs of approx. 800 base pairs. Sequence analysis revealed that these clones encoded partial cDNAs for the src-family tyrosine kinase p56lck. A novel feature of this partial cDNA was that it contained a 93 bp intron insertion that was not observed in other full length or partial lck cDNA. This aberrant lck RNA was also detected in the mRNA pool by Northern blotting and PCR amplification of poly(A)+ RNA isolated from two human leukemic T-cell lines.